几个是的rs ago the first responding apparatus took on the responsibility of decontaminating the large number of victims who may have been contaminated by an accidental release of an industrial chemical or the intentional release of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Today, those first responder companies are responsible not only for mass decontamination but also for treating, triaging, and transporting these victims-turned-patients to the hospital or care areas. Several questions have arisen concerning this situation, and they should be addressed.
First response communities, because of a large funding stream of grants, have purchased a large amount of equipment for terrorism preparedness and for researching, detecting, and monitoring the products. They have bought personal protective equipment (PPE) to protect themselves on entry, for investigation, and also for victims after they have been decontaminated. They have purchased decontamination trailers, showers, pools, and other products to expedite decontamination and have even purchased trailers and vehicles to transport the equipment to the incident scene.
Despite all these purchases and the training exercises, we still have some remaining questions: How effective has our decontamination process been? How efficient has the mass decontamination been? And most important, how ready is the hospital system for the handoff of these victims-turned patients? In posing these questions, we should ask ourselves, have we prepared ourselves to transfer this responsibility to the hospital and its staff? These pointed questions deserve some discussion, not just here but at the Local Emergency Planning Committee (LEPC) and other emergency planning meetings where the facts must be discussed.
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