I know it is a TV show but Hawthorne had an incident at the hospital and they had to evac everyone. They had FF's running back in forth and the head nurse was in charge.

 

First I'm thinking WTF x10 then I'm thinking what would really happen if a hosp had to be evacuated and as anyone ever sat down and preplanned for something like that. We run on a hosp but never had a plan for evacuation or mass casulity that I seen.

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Well that TV show is going to spark a good conversation for learning. Nothing on TV is 100% accurate in our profession, unless you are watching raw footage of an incident. The viewers who were not in the biz, would change the channel if they can't see or hear people talking clearly in that fake smoke.

You just might be surprised to find that your hospital has been pre-planned. It is a federally mandated requirement for the hospital to have one. Just probably has not been communicated to the fire department. They have to use NIMS and yes, alot of times they think they are in charge. Per statue in my state, it is unified command and they are in the Command Post with a representative. To be honest, our FD has participated in MCI evac drills with the hospital staff for just that, but it is a primary shelter in place facility, so the evac is from one wing or floor to another safe location within the facility. The facility is engineered to be a shelter in place, therefore it is not expected to evacuate to the street. Example: Someone on the table with open heart surgery is not evacuating on a routine fire alarm, smoke or fire... unless the fire was in the the operating room itself.

It is good to pre-plan or walk through their plan on a tour. You just might find out that your radios will not work inside the hospital with all the radio, magnetic and high powered equipment. We have learned and worked into the plan, to use the hospitals emergency frequency that is pre-engineered with interior repeaters. This lets a 5 watt portable operate inside the steel/concrete structure with incredible clarity.
Good question .... I know that there are a few different Preplans I have heard of, the latest one I have been exposed to involves basically removing the hospital in areas, using the hospitals system and fire doors to basically block off an area of the building in order to contain and fight the fire, it would be almost impossible to evacuate the entire Hospital, do to patients that require ICU or CCU these patients cant really just be taken out into the parking lot ... that being said if the fire begins to exceed the limits of all the safety measures and the fire department you would have to evacuate. As far as I know Hospitals are designed to lock down certain areas, with "Fire" rated doors that provide roughly 3-6 hours containment, the hospital is also built in a way that it is similar to having many different building put together, each ward or wing has firewalls surrounding it ... the EVAC system has ways of rerouting air and or blocking an area off ...
What do you Call in just!? At a automatic Alarm and at a reported Fire!?we have 3 Hospitals in our Response area and Train Mass evac every Year with them!

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