Despite gaping head wounds, third-degree burns and impaled debris, dozens of volunteers calmly sip coffee and chat with the person next to them in a large room in a small building at Royal Jubilee Hospital.
The injuries aren’t real, and neither is the propane explosion in the lobby of a group lodging site set to send 40-some casualties through the Victoria hospital in a “code orange” disaster or mass casualty exercise.
“We work to prepare, respond and recover from disasters. One of the things we focus on is code orange or mass casualty for readiness,” said Ryan Khun, Health Emergency Management B.C. director for Island Health region, ahead of the Feb. 24 exercise. A team of eight from the organization helped facilitate the mock emergency and were on hand to evaluate the event at Jubilee. Victoria General Hospital was the site of a similar exercise in 2023.
“A mass casualty event is essentially when we have so many casualties coming in that it outstrips the resources available in the emergency department. It’s really a whole system response across the entire hospital. We will look at decanting the emergency department so we can free as much space as possible, with a goal of treating as many people in as short amount of time as possible.”
About 100 additional staff were on site for the mock scenario focused on saving lives and reducing suffering should a real-life event occur. The scenarios include activation procedures to familiarize emergency department staff with the code orange response, supplies and treatment locations, and affords practice using disaster admitting, registration and tracking protocols.
It’s all about creating familiarity with the process ahead of time, building confidence in the ability to respond to a large-scale casualty incident, from weather events to things such as highway bus crashes, Kuhn said.
“It’s not frequent which is one of the important reasons why we practice this. These events do occur so we have to be prepared.”
From their comfy, chatty space in the Admin Building, the volunteer “victims” walk across the road to be triaged in front of the day’s emergency department – the Coronation Annex. There, they’re whisked to different areas based on injury – red for the emergent, yellow for the walking wounded and green for those who need to be seen but not in a rush.
Everyone seemed pleased to have the opportunity, said Melanie Cyr, site director for Royal Jubilee, from the 1,500 routinely working on-site to the 40 volunteers set to roll through as patients – some more than once.
“The teams are really excited about being able to have this opportunity to practice when it’s not an actual mass casualty,” Cyr said. “So we can get our processes streamlined and ensure our plans that we have in place are going to be effective when something really happens.”
