The health emergency exercise scenario involved a fire on-board a cargo ship moored in front of the Palermo harbor, in the sea, right in front of the Palermo promenade. The fire could not be extinguished and the captain and crew should abandon ship. Due to Northeasterly winds the plume of toxic substances released in the fire reached the densely populated area of Kalsa District. Several victims were reported which needed medical attention and transportation to nearby hospitals; essentially triggering a mass casualty emergency operation.
The exercise organization requested a commitment of 21 public organizations, 624 people, 110 ground vehicles, 10 ambulances, 17 ships and boats and 5 airborne means. Six (6) operational centers, equipped with IMPRESS incident management and DSS tools, have been installed in the facilities of the Italian Coast Guard, the Advance Medical Post created in Puntone dock at the Port area of Palermo (AMP A), the Regional Ambulance Dispatch Center (118), the Crisis Unit of the Prefecture of Palermo, the Emergency Department of the Hospital Buccheri La Ferla and the Civil Protection Headquarter (SORIS), all of them exchanging incident, patient, notification and dispatch data in real time and coordinating their response through the 1st integrated IMPRESS system. Handheld mobile devices, running the IMPRESS mobile application communicating with the Incident Management and DSS tools at the distributed operational centers, were used to collect field and patient data and feed decision support tools for prioritizing the patients’ triage list and select the proper hospital and route to send the ambulances with the victims, as well as optimize usage of available resources (ambulances, beds). All activity and assets along the whole emergency timeline from the burning ship till the hospitals ED were continuously monitored and displayed to the involved actors using the IMPRESS system capabilities.
All operations in combination with the IMPRESS system response were followed by an extended list of international evaluators (4), ethics experts (3) and observers (15), positioned at various key places (on board a ship to follow the rescue at sea and then the treatment and dispatch at the Advanced Medical posts, or at Command and Control centers of 118, Prefecture and the Hospital), who collected data and provided feedback concerning the performance of the system to the realistic requirements of the scenario.
The series of health emergency management activities triggered the use of IMPRESS tools and functionalities and the coordination of distributed first responder teams and agencies involved in the exercise as well as the optimization of resources and timely dispatch of patients to hospitals. Initially, the incident was reported and registered at the INCIMAG instances at the Emergency Service, Emergency Department of local hospitals and at the National Health Service Operation center, which dispatched and notified the respective First Responder teams at the incident location on incident status evolution and actions to be taken, and subsequently managed the sequence of all necessary operations supported by the Incident Management, Coordination and DSS tools of IMPRESS
(INCIMAG instances).
Thus, according to the incident evolution and reported victims, firefighting and rescue teams were dispatched to the location of the burning ship, and first responder teams notified and coordinated accordingly to the encountered situations though INCIMOB, while three Advanced Medical Posts have been setup, with First Responders equipped with smart phones with INCIMOB.
VVF team on board the burning ship, the Red Cross and at Advanced Medical Post or the ambulances, equipped with smart phones with INCIMOB, performed first encounter and subsequent triage of rescued victims from the burning ship and from the sea through INCIMOB. The data were dispatched to the respective INCIMAGs and DSS tools were activated to provide recommendations on patient status evolution, hospital dispatch and optimized use of available resources. The on-field activities were coordinated at the three Advanced Medical Posts, by the on scene Medical Coordinator operating INCIMAG mobile.
For the purposes of this exercise, installation, integration and testing procedures took place throughout the preceding period starting 30 May to 5 June 2016. On May 31st 2016 an online training took place at the premises of CNR for the end users participating in the exercise, with fully-fledged hands-on physical training taking place on June 6th 2016 at the premises of the major Italian Agencies involved in the exercise, as well as at CNR premises, the latter for the first responders teams on the field.
Read more for the Palermo exercise at: http://fp7-impress.eu/index.php/news/38-impress-palermo-demo
This Project has receiver Funding from the EUROPEAN UNION’s Seventh Framework Programe for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration under Grant Agreement No 608078
Photos of the Palermo Trial
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