Texas Children’s emergency response plan will be put to the test during a comprehensive mass casualty exercise this Friday.
Our Emergency Management team is working with the Houston Police Department SWAT team and Houston Fire Department emergency medical services to coordinate a full-scale active shooter exercise with students and staff at Michael E. DeBakey High School for Health Professions.
“Every day we hear reports in our own community of incidents that can result in a significant number of patients arriving at Texas Children’s requiring critical care,” said Risk Management Director Melissa Murrah. “Whether the issue is an active shooter – which is all over the media today – a chemical release or severe weather, it is essential that we are prepared to respond in support of our community.”
The nearly six-hour exercise will involve mock shootings, an improvised explosive device and a hostage situation. The intent is to observe the agencies’ emergency response, to refine the collective response and to help us be better prepared to treat those harmed in a real incident. In addition, Texas Children’s Emergency Management is hoping to test our mass casualty incident plan, emergency communications, incident command structure and patient flow.
About 400 DeBakey High School staff, students and parents will be involved in the exercise, which will begin with a safety briefing to prepare students. The exercise will be activated at 9 a.m. on the campus with an active shooter incident. Students will be triaged initially on site at the high school, and about 50 of them will arrive at Texas Children’s Emergency Center around 11:20 a.m. with mock life-threatening injuries like gunshot wounds, crushing injuries, blast and shrapnel injuries and psychological trauma.
When the students arrive at Texas Children’s, they will be mostly contained to the Emergency Center and Rapid Treatment Areas on the first floor of West Tower so as not to impact care and treatment of our actual patients. Injured students will be in full moulage, which is a detailed application of make-up that simulates wounds.
“Two essential elements of good performance are training and exercise,” said Emergency Management Manager Aaron Freedkin. “Training provides the foundation, and exercises test that foundation. To ensure our training is tested, we must practice as closely as possible to reality. Whether through use of realistic make-up for patients in a mass casualty incident or donning personal protective equipment for decontamination exercises, training efforts pay off when a real incident occurs.”
More than 20 Texas Children’s operations, clinical and logistics teams will be involved in Friday’s exercise, including Emergency Medicine, Trauma Services, Respiratory Therapy, Diagnostic Imaging, Pathology, Child Life, Security, Marketing/PR and others. This is the first exercise of its kind and scope that Texas Children’s has coordinated, but the current climate makes it critical that the organization be prepared.
“Given the risks we face along the Texas Gulf Coast, we spend significant time preparing Texas Children’s in hurricane response and preparedness,” said Emergency Management Assistant Director James Mitchell. “Yet, the reality is that we face a wide range of hazards that are manifesting more frequently than ever before.
“Severe weather and flooding, as we experienced repeatedly this spring, increasing occurrence of active shooter incidents and acts of terrorism all require our planning and preparation. As such, we are dedicated to testing our system in innovative and realistic ways across a variety of scenarios throughout the year.”