The Grand Marais Rec. Park was the scene of a horrific plane crash on Saturday, April 30, sending 12 patients with serious injuries to Cook County North Shore Hospital. Don’t worry though, despite the realistic-looking wounds, the victims were only role-playing for a mass casualty emergency response exercise during the Cook County Emergency Services Conference. See more of the exercise on page A3.
To avoid a panicked population in Grand Marais last Saturday, the Cook County Emergency Services Conference training exercise was announced and advertised well in advance. Members of the Safe Traffic Operation Program (STOP) diverted traffic away from the scene. It was a good thing, because the flaming fuselage and the battered and bloodied plane crash victims at the Grand Marais Rec Park would have frightened bystanders who happened upon the simulation on April 30.
What unwitting passersby wouldn’t have known was that the disaster was all part of the 22nd Annual Emergency Services Conference.
As planning began for this year’s conference, Cook County Emergency Management Director Jim Wiinanen received a suggestion to conduct a firefighting exercise around an aircraft crash scenario. “Then ambulance services wanted to exercise a mass casualty incident. The exercise snowballed from there,” said Wiinanen.
The situation that unfolded was this: A commercial airplane from Thunder Bay has engine trouble and must make an emergency landing. The Grand Marais airport is socked in with fog, so the pilot attempts a landing in the Grand Marais harbor, coming to a jarring and fiery stop near the city maintenance building at the campground.
Two Hermantown fire fighters, Jerry Huberty and Wade Boyat of Aircraft Rescue and Fire Fighter Specialists, constructed this fuselage for practice of aircraft rescue fire fighting (ARFF). The plane “wreckage” can be engulfed in flames over and over again. Local firefighters had to enter the plane to rescue dummy “victims.”
Approximately 150 responders were activated to handle the crisis, including seven fire departments and three ambulance services. There were EMTs and First Responders, sheriff deputies, Border Patrol officers, State Troopers, the Hovland STOP team, Public Health & Human Services staff, public information specialists, and an incident management team.
They were called in to action to fight the plane fire, to care for displaced persons at an emergency shelter at Cook County High School, and to transport and treat the plane crash victims with a variety of grotesque injuries. A team of accident make-up (moulage) experts transformed 12 volunteers into patients with injuries ranging from cuts and bruises to severe burns and severed limbs. The “victims” gave a stellar performance, acting in turn confused and frightened, making the job of the emergency responders as hard as possible.
Above: Moulage applied by Carey Ashbee, Katie Forneir, Bette Kreul, and Brenda Monahan was incredibly realistic. The women use bits of dirt and even glass to make traumatic injuries look real. Left: One of the “victims” was Ben Seaton, who like his fellow students, gave an amazing performance.
The “victims” were Daniel Ahrendt, Shelby Ahrendt, Karen Blackburn, Barb Dvorak, Rosemary Lamson, Elsa Lunde, Ezra Lunde, Ben Seaton, Will Seaton, Charles Silence, Kathy Sullivan, Amber Todd and Aliya Weisberg.
The moulage artists were Carey Ashbee, Katie Forneir, Bette Kreul and Brenda Monahan.
Ambulances transferred the victims to Cook County North Shore Hospital, where the hospital conducted its own mass casualty exercise, including locking down the facility to anyone not involved in patient care (such as this reporter).
Another set of victims—evacuees—were directed to the emergency shelter at the high school, where they were registered with Red Cross forms and offered emotional support. Organizers purposely instructed the victims—some elderly, some families with young children—to arrive all at the same time so there was a realistic bottleneck of about 20 people needing help. Human Services Director Sue Futterer said, “We really learned a lot from this.”
Firefighters from fire departments all over the county, Silver Bay, Finland, and Canada, continued batting down the flames and rescuing special mannequin victims from the wrecked plane throughout the day, until representatives of all the different groups gathered at the Cook County Community Center for an “after action review” (AAR).
Adam Shadiow, the Northeast MN Education and Training Coordinator, facilitated the AAR and congratulated all of the emergency responders on not only the successful training, but also on the fact that all of the training was conducted safely. “You all put in close to 2,000 man hours today, with no injuries. You can be proud of that as well,” he said.
Emergency Management Director Wiinanen introduced the 28 people who served as evaluators for the exercise. These people shadowed their counterparts during the exercise to give feedback on how the event was handled. The various evaluators gave a quick report of the things they saw that worked and gave some suggestions for improvement.
One theme repeated by several was the idea that Cook County should create its own incident management team with trained local people to provide command services on large or complex incidents such as the exercise. Bruce West of Homeland Security and Emergency Management said having such a team was a good idea. “Cook County has a lot of talented people who could do this,” said West.
Other initiatives that will be pursued are the creation of a local information team to provide public information; a mobile field kitchen to provide food to responders on an extended incident, especially in a remote location; and emergency day care.
Bob Norlen, from the Emergency Medical Services Regulatory Board, gave some advice on “the three Ts—triage, transport and treatment.” He pointed out a few things that could be improved, but overall he said, “I’ve never seen a more dedicated group providing these services on a daily basis for the people of this community and for those passing through. For people to come from all ends of the county to work together like this is just phenomenal,” said Norlen.
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