Abandoned Alarm Response Exercises
By: Lance Winslow
So, often emergency vehicles and first responders are scrambled to the scene of an accident, but along the way, it is determined that there are no actual injuries or any need for fire trucks. Yet these emergency vehicles are still en route. A complete waste of resources is the resultant and something should be done about this. I would suggest that we turn such false alarms into training exercises rather than waste such an opportunity with all the first-responders on the crew and all that adrenaline flowing.
What if we divert these cancelled emergency calls for training purposes to high-stress bio-terrorist training or radiation dirty bomb exercises? First on the scene what do you do? Are they ready? Video tape it; what did they do wrong, what did they do right? Do we need to adjust our training in the future or perhaps the actual procedures to insure that no mistakes or miss communications happen next time? If this was a real event how many of the first responders were protected, how many faced issues and how many lives did they save all in all? Sure it is only a drill, but much more real as it is a surprise quiz with a reality check test.
Such an ad hoc reality based training and testing system to check to make sure our first responders are ready for anything at any time is a smart move. This is the only reason I have brought up this issue. I hope you will consider all this in 2006.
Lance Winslow - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/