Real victims add to challenge of disaster drill

For emergency personnel at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, Saturday’s mock disaster drill was made a little more challenging by having to deal with two genuine emergencies.

The day began when EMMC officials learned on the scanner that the exercise, simulating a crash between a Maine Air National Guard fuel tanker and a passenger plane, had started. While the hospitals were supposed to be notified of incoming “patients,” they were not told until after it had begun.

The hospital had made arrangements to monitor scanner traffic more closely than usual in anticipation of the drill, said Dr. Norman Dinerman, chief of emergency services there. Notification through official channels — which typically would come from either the Bangor Police Department or the Bangor Fire Department — didn’t come for at least another hour because dispatchers were swamped with other messages.

“We figured we probably wouldn’t get called,” Dinerman said Saturday afternoon, adding that the mishap was not a major issue. Dinerman also was emergency medical services coordinator at a Denver hospital during the 1987 crash there of a Continental Airlines flight in which 28 people were killed and others injured.

Saturday’s event began at about 9 a.m., and the first ambulances rolled in about an hour later.

Two actual traffic accidents, in which the patients were brought to EMMC even as about 40 simulated victims from the drill were taken there, provided “a fair measure of reality” to the exercise that Dinerman characterized as positive.

Julie Jellison, 11, was checking the mail at her home on Route 9 Saturday morning as John Egan, 71, of Granton, Ontario, was traveling the road. Jellison began to cross, hesitated, and then allegedly darted out in front of Egan, according to Trooper Brian Teriault of the Maine State Police.

Jellison was taken to Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, where she was listed in fair condition, a nursing supervisor said.

Three Bangor-area residents also were treated at EMMC Saturday after being injured in a two-car accident in Bangor.

A late-model car driven by Sandra J. Spencer, 35, of Brewer was stopped on State Street in Bangor Saturday morning, preparing to turn left into Grotto Cascade Park. A car traveling behind her, driven by Robert F. Paul, 67, of Old Town, failed to stop, and then allegedly ran into the back of Spencer’s car.

Both drivers and Ashley Spencer, 4, who was a passenger in Spencer’s car, were treated and released.

The accidents provided participants in Saturday’s mock disaster at BIA with added, yet welcome, confusion as hospital officials worked to handle the real problems along with the simulated ones.

“I think it’s perfect (to have a real emergency in the midst of the drill),” Dinerman said. “It represents reality.”

While officials worked at the Cascade Park accident, part of the drill corridor for mock emergency vehicles reportedly was closed, providing further problems.

EMMC officials said the response showed improvement — particularly in communication within the hospital itself — over a similar drill performed on a smaller scale last summer.

At the hospital itself, said Dinerman, the newly expanded Emergency Department learned that it would have to improve patient-flow procedures. But he graded the hospital’s response “A-minus,” pointing out that at one point, the ambulance bay contained seven emergency vehicles, more than could have been accommodated at the old emergency room.