Mass Casualty Event Drills Could Benefit Utilities
I recently read an article that described a mass casualty event drill conducted by Lakeland Hospital in September 2018. The hospital conducts similar drills annually, each time focusing on a different scenario. This time, the scenario was a truck barreling through a massive crowd at an event.
Should Utility Companies Consider Conducting a Drill Based on a Mass Casualty Event?
The Lakeland Hospital drill was extremely realistic, complete with ambulances physically transporting victims to the hospital. Obviously, a drill like this is important for hospitals because their “business model” is saving lives. From a utility restoration perspective, yes saving lives is a factor, but typically the vast majority of utility restoration resources are working specifically toward the goal of restoring service ASAP.
This begs the question, should a utility exercise or drill ever use a mass casualty event as the hypothetical drill scenario? In my opinion, I think it would be beneficial because, let’s face it, something like this definitely could happen, and if it does, it could hinder outage restoration efforts.
Imagine a widespread outage is being worked, when someone decides to “get revenge” on the utility. A deranged shooter could target utility personnel to somehow get even. Or a staging area housing hundreds or thousands of mutual assistance personnel is attacked.
The reality of emergency preparedness is that it relies on expecting the unexpected. And while I wouldn’t expect a mass casualty event to impact utility emergency preparedness, it’s not an impossible scenario, especially with the echo chamber effect of the internet facilitating more and more copycat behavior and deranged philosophies. So, why should you have a mass casualty event drill? I say a better question is, why not?
