Mass Casualty Exercise Held for Taylor County, Florida

DSI conducted a mass casualty incident (MCI) full scale exercise for Taylor County, Florida Emergency Management. Participants included emergency management, EMS, fire, law enforcement, community emergency response team, and volunteer agency personnel. The exercise focused not only on preparing personnel for dealing with an actual MCI, but also helped prepare them for large community events that have the potential to involve mass casualties, should some sort of disaster occur. 

The exercise provided agencies with the opportunity to practice patient care (triage, assessment, treatment, and transport), patient extrication, scene security, medical helicopter operations, incident command, interagency coordination, and victim search and rescue. A simulated incident was created, which gave emergency response personnel the chance to hone skills in an environment (and along a timeline) that approximated a real event. An After Action Report and Improvement Plan, developed following the exercise, gave Taylor County a good feel not only for what practices and procedures are working well, but also what areas can be improved upon to foster excellent responses in the future. 

In a press release for the exercise, Emergency Management Director Steve Spradley stated, “I’m confident in our county agencies’ abilities, and this exercise enhanced those abilities with valuable training. It was a great learning opportunity.” Summing up the exercise, he concluded, “We’re training for a reality that we hope never happens, but we will be ready if it does.”