2010 Olympic Emergency Preparedness Exercise
Official Spectator Hospital Participates in Mass Casualty Drill
Nov 5, 2009
St. Paul’s Hospital (Vancouver, B.C.) was the site of a mock mass casualty emergency scene in a two-part exercise that began at a nearby train station with a staged hazmat incident. From there, forty-eight volunteers acting as injured victims arrived at the hospital for triage, with twenty of them requiring decontamination. Luckily the mock incident resulted in only minor injuries, with “patients” being treated for shock and artificial wounds.
While participating Emergency Room staff readied themselves for a worst-case scenario rehearsal, no “patients” were admitted to the hospital and no major “injuries” were sustained. Members of St. Paul’s Hospital psychosocial team were activated to support staff and volunteers to deal with what would be a traumatic event in the case of a real-life incident.
The hospital portion of the activity occurred in an outside courtyard behind the real emergency department, minimizing the impact of the exercise on real emergency patient care and staffing.
Learning Opportunity
Learnings included the need to improve communication flow between staff in the Emergency Department and staff in the Emergency Operations Centre (EOC), the need for additional decontamination training for staff and the need for an enhanced overhead paging system.
Located in downtown Vancouver, St. Paul’s Hospital will be the official spectator hospital during the Games. The exercise was an opportunity to validate the hospital’s current mass casualty response plans.
2010 Organization
In conjunction with the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games (VANOC), municipal, provincial and federal levels of government developed a three-part exercise program designed to test and validate integrated response within the Lower Mainland in the event of an emergency during the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. This three-part program was broken down into three exercises increasing in scope, complexity and participation:
- Exercise Bronze (Nov 2008) examined regional safety and security issues;
- Exercise Silver (Feb 2009) practiced safety and security plans, procedures and interoperability; and
- Exercise Gold (Nov 2-6, 2009) which was a full-scale exercise confirming readiness for the Games.
Exercise Gold included two full-scale live-action events simulating chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, explosive (CBRNE) incidents in Richmond and Vancouver, British Columbia. The simulations provided realistic environments with mock casualties played by volunteers.
Over 100 agencies participated in Exercise Gold during the first week of November including local health authorities, Public Health agency of Canada, Vancouver Police Department, RCMP, Vancouver Fire & Rescue, City of Vancouver and Canadian forces.
The 2010 Olympic Games run from February 12 – 28 and the Paralympic Winter Games run from March 12 – 21, 2010.
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