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Further Concepts in Mass Disaster Planning for the Eighties

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2017

Leon D. Star ,
Louis C. Abelson  and
Louis R.M. DelGuercio
Leon D. Star
Affiliation:
Kennedy Airport Medical Office, New York, NY, USA
Louis C. Abelson
Affiliation:
Kennedy Airport Medical Office, New York, NY, USA
Louis R.M. DelGuercio
Affiliation:
Department of Surgery, New York Medical College, New York, NY, USA
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Extract

What exactly comprises a “disaster?” The American College of Emergency Physicians has defined the term as “a sudden massive disproportion between hostile elements of any kind and survival resources that are available to counterbalance these hostile elements in the shortest period of time” (1).

In a small airport supporting a town of 10,000 an aircraft accident involving 4 or 5 casualties can constitute a disaster by this definition, whereas at Kennedy Airport (JKF) with its large depots of medical support, and where our experience in this area has been considerable, it would take many more casualties to qualify as a disaster. “Black Sunday” at Tenerife, with 500 casualties in a single incident (2), focused world attention on the need for more adequate casualty care of air crashes at airports, particularly at airports that handle wide-bodied jets. In our efforts to improve the methods of “bringing the hospital to the emergency rather than the emergency to the hospital,” the “workshop” at Kennedy Airport has evolved over the years from a cumbersome inflatable unit with limited mobility, to a Mobile Emergency Hospital with a capacity of 100 beds and an operating room (3).

In the past year, we have developed an even more practicable Mobile Emergency Hospital, the size of a standard cargo container, 40 feet long by 8 feet wide and 8 feet high with 4-wheel drive and self-propelled at 55 miles per hour, capable of being lifted by helicopter, flown in a Lockheed C130 or cargo 747, placed on a railroad flat-bed or transported as a container on the deck of a ship (4,5).

Type
Section Two—Organization and Preparation
Information
Prehospital and Disaster Medicine , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , Summer 1985 , pp. 145 - 147
Copyright
Copyright © World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine 1985

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References

1 American College of Emergency Physicians. The role of the emergency physician in mass casualty/disaster management. A position paper. JACEP 1976; 5(11):901:Z.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 Star, LD, Abelson, LC. International Congress of Aviation & Space Medicine, Helsinki, Finland. 09 September 1977.Google Scholar
3 Star, LD, Abelson, LC. Stabilization of air crash victims — International Congress of Aerospace Medicine, London, England, 08 September 1978.Google Scholar
4 Star, LD, Abelson, LC, DelGuercio, LRM, et al. Mobilization for trauma teams for aircraft disasters. Aviation Space and Environme Med 1980; 1262–1266.Google Scholar
5 Star, LD, Abelson, LC, Stefanki, JX. Passenger survival in wide-bodied jet aircraft accidents vs. other aircraft — a comparison. Aviation Space and Environmen Med 1980; 1266–1269.Google Scholar
6 Dove, DB, DelGuercio, LRM, Stahl, W, et al. Mass disaster planning — a new concept for the eighties. American Trauma Society, Phoenix, Arizona, September 1980.Google Scholar