This session will provide emergency management personnel with an
overview of hospital evacuation considerations when there are
only minutes to hours to prepare. The life cycle of an evacuation
event will be presented including the Pre-Evacuation, Evacuation,
and Post-Evacuation stages, with a focus on the preparedness and
response actions in each stage. The components of a standardized
evacuation toolkit and recommendations for hospitals/health care
systems to adapt and implement the toolkit will be reviewed.
Presenter:
Suzy Fitzgerald, MD, FACEP, FAAEM,
Regional EM Training Director & Emergency Physician, Kaiser
Permanente Northern California
Shakiara Kitchen, CHEP, CEM, Regional
Practice Specialist, Emergency Management, Kaiser Permanante
The primary objective of this presentation is to assist other
health care facilities with improving their own response and
business continuity plans in the event of a wildfire evacuation.
Presenters share lessons learned from the full-scale evacuation
of Barton Memorial Hospital and Skilled Nursing Facility in
response to the Caldor Fire. We will discuss the logistical
challenges of evacuating and repopulating a bistate rural health
care system, explore staffing and personnel challenges and
considerations, and review lessons learned.
Presenter:
April Boyde, MSSM, CPP, Safety
and Security Manage
Elizabeth Stork, Chief Human Resource
Officer, Barton Health
Learn about the experiences of Dr. Josh Weil, Skip Skivington,
and Mitch Saruwatari during and after the North Bay Fires.
ASPR TRACIE interviewed these Kaiser staff members about their
personal encounter with the wildfire and professional ordeal
evacuating a hospital in the midst of one.
The attached Guidelines for Developing Best Practices to Assist
California Hospitals in Preparing for and Responding to a Water
Disruption may be used for any hospital water disruption planning
activities.
These guidelines were drafted under the CHA Hospital Preparedness
Program with participation from a work group which was comprised
of hospital representatives and state regulatory agencies.
The guidelines address:
Overview of a hospital water disruption
The hospital water supply planning team
Conducting a water use audit
Role of California Regulatory Agencies in a water disruption
Water disruption standards and regulations
Coordinating with the community response to a water
disruption
The guidelines contain links to federal and state references and
include six attachments which provide additional information and
check lists to assist hospitals with water disruption planning
and response.
National Voluntary Organizations
Active in Disaster (VOAD) members are responding to the
call for help. Founded in 1970, National VOAD is an
association of organizations that mitigate and alleviate the
impact of disasters, provides a forum promoting
cooperation, communication, coordination and collaboration;
and fosters more effective delivery of services to communities
affected by disaster. For more information about how to become a
member go to their Join the Movement
Webpage.
Hospitals and healthcare organizations play a crucial role in
community resilience, particularly in the face of increasing
incidents of extreme weather due to climate change. The
Department of Health and Human Services has developed the
Sustainable and Climate Resilient Health Care Facilities Toolkit
to assist in building resilience, providing guidance and
resources for healthcare organizations to address these
challenges and develop sustainable and climate-resilient
facilities:
No one could have predicted the number and magnitude of the
natural disasters that affected Missouri in 2011. But, such is
the nature of disasters, and that is why planning and
preparedness pays off.
Many hospitals throughout Missouri activated their emergency
operations plans and the hospital command centers because of the
2011 disasters. In situations such as the January blizzard and
the floods in southeast and northwest Missouri, the activation of
both the emergency operations plan (EOP) and incident command
(IC) were by all accounts very successful. There was adequate
notice and time to prepare, and the communication systems were
uninterrupted.
Although the financial damage for all three events was
substantial, the impact on the health care system was manageable.
Go behind the scenes at UC San Diego as a five story mockup of a
hospital, including a surgical suite, is subjected to dramatic
earthquakes in order to better understand how the many complex
systems within hospital buildings perform after earthquakes.
Teaming up with the California Seismic Safety Commission, this
UCSD-TV documentary explores the history of seismic safety for
California’s hospital infrastructure, and what is being done to
secure its future.UC San Diego’s Englekirk Structural Engineering
Center has provided this video preview of the largest, most
complex seismic test ever conducted.
The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO
developed this guide as a basis for forming a strong community
tsunami readiness policy. It provides a general plan of action
and basic framework for dealing with the unique hazards resulting
from tsunamis. This guide outlines the construction and
maintenance of defensive structures and discusses how current
disaster prevention and emergency response planning can be
improved by using research on past tsunamis.
Each planner must take into account their community’s unique
circumstances
and review their current action plans. In doing so, planners will
be able to adapt each community’s unique topography, special
circumstances, changes in
the social environment a nd scientific research to the proposed
overall strategy contained in this guide.
The Earthquake
Country Alliance (ECA) is a public-private-grassroots
partnership of people and organizations that work together to
improve earthquake and tsunami preparedness, mitigation and
resiliency.
ECA’s regional alliances, sector-based committees, and outreach
bureaus develop resources and organize activities to help
everyone who lives, works, or travels in earthquake country be
prepared to survive and recover quickly.
Hospitals with interest in joining healthcare sector committee
will have the opportunity to engage with experts, develop ECA
priorities, fill sector gaps, and build opportunities for
engagement and education at all levels.
