disaster

Yesterday I left OKC at 6am to head for the metropolis of Ponca City, Oklahoma, for a disaster training drill with the Oklahoma Medical Reserve Corps and the Oklahoma Disaster Medical Assistance Team. They had a practice drill to set up a special needs shelter inside a big auditorium in Ponca City based on FEMA information and scenarios from Hurricanes Rita and Katrina.

We set up tents and cots, triage and administration, and had approximately 47 volunteer Poncan citizens brought by bus and processed through the system in a little over three hours. In all I think it went really well. Other than some space issues, needing more room, we didn't run into a huge amount of problems with the drill.

I've been working with MRC for a while, but I'm thinking about signing up with DMAT. They're deployed with national disasters and upsets. There's a meeting at the end of April, so I'll probably think about it between now and then.