Campus Life

Mock Disaster at Utah State Tests Cache Valley's Emergency Preparation

Emergency rescue crews from throughout Cache Valley are awaiting a final grade after a comprehensive and massive disaster drill Tuesday morning at Utah State’s University Inn tested the skills of hundreds of response personnel.


The drill simulated a disaster in which a construction crane collapsed the upper floors of the University Inn, injuring more than 75 people, 50 of them seriously.

Utah State University Police Sgt. Lynn Wright, emergency management coordinator at Utah State, said the disaster exercise was a comprehensive undertaking involving the coordinated efforts of various city and county emergency response organizations, including hospitals, fire and police departments, emergency medical technicians, Red Cross, Civil Air Patrol, transportation crews, Utah State Campus Emergency Response Teams (CERT) and many others.


The CERT teams performed extremely well, Wright said, especially given the number of seriously injured patients they had to treat and transport from the upper floors of the building.

"It was exceptional training for them and, in fact, for all of the people who participated in the exercise," he said.

Brady Hansen, training officer for the Logan City Fire Department, echoed Wright’s assessment of the situation as events were still unfolding. Hansen, who is also a CERT trainer, said the CERT teams did an exceptional job working in coordination with medical professionals from the fire department and other valley response teams.

"It is critical that we get to train together like this," Hansen said. "It gives us [fire department paramedics] confidence and knowledge about how much the CERT teams know, and it teaches us that they are a good, reliable resource. It also gives us a chance to find out where we need to train more."


Logan City Fire Department Capt. Randy Einzinger, a medical group leader for the exercise, said the drills give emergency rescue crews the chance to pick up on possible snags during training so if a real disaster ever occurs, the teams will be ready. Einzinger was in charge of transportation, treatment and triage of patients, and his radio was in constant action as he communicated with various other response units during the operation.


He said transportation is often one of the biggest problems in mass casualty disasters, and in this case, he was coordinating ambulances, LTD buses and Utah State shuttle buses to transport patients to either Logan Regional Hospital, Cache Specialty Hospital or to Red Cross operations, where the non-injured patients were transported.

"This is a complex exercise, but it allows us to get to know and test a lot of the players who would be involved in the case of a real emergency," Hansen said. "This kind of event pulls us out of our ‘normal’ roles and gives us a chance to accomplish different training scenarios we might see. We don’t get the chance to ‘overwhelm’ our crews, but that’s what might happen in a real situation."


Contact: Utah State Public Relations and Marketing, (435) 797-1351
Writer: Tim Vitale, (435) 797-1356
Photos courtesy Utah State Photo Services

Mock Disaster at Utah State Tests Cache Valley's Emergency Preparation

Mock Disaster at Utah State Tests Cache Valley's Emergency Preparation

Mock Disaster at Utah State Tests Cache Valley's Emergency Preparation

Mock Disaster at Utah State Tests Cache Valley's Emergency Preparation


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