DMAT San Diego CA-4 * January 2004 Newsletter
****
Volume 13, Number 1 ****
A
deployable Disaster Medical Assistance Team. Affiliated with the National
Disaster Medical System. Founded 1991
DMAT San Diego CA-4 is a public benefit, non-profit 501(c)3 corporation.,
registered in the State of California and with the IRS.
Co-Sponsored
by: UCSD
Medical Center & International Relief Teams
Mailing Address: 200 West Arbor Drive, San Diego, CA 92103-8676
DMAT CA-4 Information Line: 619-543-6216
eMail address of Newsletter Editor, Jake Jacoby: ca4cdr@san.rr.com
DMAT CA-4 WEB site: http://www.dmatca4.org
CONTENTS
Calendar
Of Events..........................................Page 1
Commander's Log.......................................... .Page 1
Distinguished Member of the Year......................Page 2
San Bernardino Mudslide Response- a member's experience., by Beverly Fitagerald......................Page
3
****
CALENDAR of EVENTS:
DMAT CA-4
Team Meeting
Wednesday,
January 28, 2004
6:00 PM
at our
Ops Center
8830-G Rehco
Road, San Diego
****
*NDMS Annual Meeting,
Dallas, TX Apr. 17-21, 2004.
The 12th Annual Tri-Service
Combat Stress Conference dates are 30 April (Friday) through 6 May (Thursday)
2004 at the San Luis Rey Officers Club, Camp Pendleton. Conference segment 1-2
May; Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) certification courses 3-4 May
and 5-6 May.
****
Commander's Log
*
As January began, DMAT CA-4 has found itself still on ALERT status, which began
on December 21st, after the Dept of Homeland Security (DHS) increased its Threat
Assessment Category to HIGH (Orange), based on what I would call "correlative
circumstantial evidence." That is evidence of a nature that is not detailed,
but based on an increased number of activities on the part of surveilled
terrorist contacts, that seemed to occur prior to other terrorist attacks, and
therefore might be predictive of them, juxtaposed to the holiday season and
numerous high profile events that occur in a scheduled fashion, rendering them
possible targets. The effect of this was the need for rostering a team and
loading the cache. An unusually large number of teams was placed on ALERT for
this period of time, larger than previously alerted in the past when the threat
assessment level was raised to Orange.
How did we do? We had just had a meeting with h e County of San Diego, after
months of preparation, to learn how to use the County's digital communicator to
send out computer generated home and work phone and page messages about the need
to roster a team. We had not really had a chance to introduce the operations
plan to our members, but since the system was sin place, it was decided by your
command group to go ahead and use it. By the end of the afternoon, we had 29
positive responses, which was a great start to the roster of 35 needed by the
next morning. The roster continued to be maintained up till January 5th and
then was extended one more week, until the 13th. A bus rental with Coach USA
was arranged by FEMA Logistics, and remained available until we went off ALERT.
However, the cache was maintained on our leased trucks, and remains so.
Just from the ALERT, a number of lessons have been learned, and we will
review those, and get your input, at the next meeting, at which time we will
complete our After Action Report and submit it to NDMS.
One other possibility for a deployment occurred during our ALERT phase. The
South Pacific cyclone Heta, first tropical storm of the new year, devastated
the U.S. island territory of American Samoa and the neighboring nation of Samoa
on January 4th. A news item by Bonnie Gillespie of the American Red Cross, on
their web site, describes the storm "per locals as the worst cyclone in living
memory. The category 5 storm caused 45 foot ocean swells and winds gusting up
to 200 mph. It downed power lines and caused extensive damage to housing,
utilities and commercial structures across the island of 65,000 inhabitants. "
More than 600 homes were said to be affected, and water, power and sewer
services were lost. The area most severely affected by Heta was the island
state of Niue, population 1,700. The majority of crops were lost and most
buildings were damaged, including the island's only public hospital. One death
occurred, in a collapsed structure. .Despite the severity of the storm, there
was no direct medical mission, and no DMATs were deployed.
* As the team
members know, NDMS moved into the Dept of Homeland Security on March 1, 2004.
Since that time, the entire way business was done in NDMS has changed. NDMS, a
former joint partner system managed by DHHS, appears to this observer to have
been downgraded to a mere section of FEMA, and almost 2/3rds of the entire NDMS
staff have been moved to other job s within FEMA or DHS. All this has occurred,
while the teams were being asked to provide NDMS with records of past
deployments, as institutional memory seems to have disappeared with the move,
and no trace of actual deployments per team could be found. No ID cards have
been issued for new applicants in the last 5 months, despite assurances that the
system would not suffer from the "merger" (or, 'takeover". Of major significance
is the just -announced recategorization of DMATs, based on how they have done
during the last year, when asked to submit rosters, and whether the membership p
is adequate, and a whole host of other issues that appear to have been sued to
demoralize some of the newer teams within the family of NDMS. No longer treated
like family members but more like cogs in a wheel, a large number of the
deployable teams were downgraded in the last few weeks from deployable to
developmental or personnel only teams, and have been taken off the "First Up to
Deploy" roster. We, however, were notified that we are a "Type 1 Fully
Deployable" team. [The other Categories are"Type II: Deployable." Type III:
Personnel deployable only" and "Type IV: Developmental ."
We cannot share the numbers of teams that were downgraded here, since the
newsletter is posted on our web site, but this will be discussed at the next
team meeting. Obviously many volunteers on the teams that were downgraded are
unhappy, irate and angry that( a) no "grace period" was given to them to
correct deficiencies that NDMS team evaluators found.... perhaps a short grace
period could have allowed teams to correct their issues and make the system
better as a whole, without endangering morale--such as focused recruitment or
purchase of cache items that might be missing.
(b) no equivalent critique has ever had any effect on NDMS, as it takes as
long, or longer than it ever has, to get new members through the system, and
FEMA until recent weeks has not had any procedure at all for getting response
teams into the Federal payroll system. (c) Some teams were faulted for not
having a completed cache, but it is NDMS that is supposed to supply those
caches, and thus the fact that teams had to be downgraded for such a deficiency
speaks more about the ability of NDMS to deliver, rather than the teams. At
CA-4 we are still missing many items from a full basic load., but we must have
had more points from other aspects of our operation to avoid a downgrade. A
2-hour conference call was held 2 weeks ago by the teams that are members of
the National Association of DMATs.(NADMAT), and 30 teams were represented. A
summary of the many points brought up were relayed on a subsequent NDMS
conference call to Capt. Gary Sirmons, interim NDMS section chief. More on this
at the meeting. Should make for an exciting NDMS Conference all members
meeting, or team Commanders meeting with the NDMS/FEMA directorate, come April
in Dallas. I hope we can get lots of people going, as we have in the past.
****
CA-4 Distinguished
Volunteer Member of the Year Selected for 2003
Congratulations to our newest
Volunteer member of the Year for 2003! The selectee of the team is Zona
Wahrenbrock. Zona was an original member of the CA-8 DMAT, and became a
CA-4 member as the two teams merged in 1999. She was an OR nurse for many years
at the Coronado Hospital, now Sharp Coronado, and currently works part time in a
private physician's office. Zona has been our Administrative Officer for
three years, after being on our roster as a Supervisory Nurse, and clearly runs
our personnel paperwork like clockwork. The procedure on our end has never been
smoother. Zona was recognized as someone who is "always there to help out with
paperwork problems," with a glowing and warm personality that makes something so
tedious become almost effortless. She is truly a valuable asset to our team, and
has made many valuable contributions to the smooth running of the administrative
function of our team when on stand-by as well as on deployment. She deployed to
Guam for Super Typhoon Pongsona, and to Ground Zero in NYC after the Terrorist
Attacks on America. She has been to many exercises over the years, and currently
works 15 hours per week handling the administrative load for the team. Zona
will have her attendance at the Annual Meeting of NDMS in Dallas,Texas paid for,
including hotel, airfare and meeting registrations, and will be recognized by
NDMS at the Awards Ceremony for Distinguished members. Congratulations also to
the other nominees. We are privileged to have had so many members nominated
this year. Again, congratulations to our Distinguished Volunteer member of the
Year.
****
Waterman Response/ SD
Sheriff's Dept. SAR K-9 Unit
(CADAVER DOG TEAMS)
by Beverly Fitzgerald
EMT, K-9 Handler, SDSD
SAR, K-9 Unit
[Editor's note: On Dec.
25,2003, a flash flood and mudslides in Devore and San Bernardino killed 15
people after a downpour fell on hillsides that had been stripped of vegetation
by the fires. With nothing to hold the soil in place, mud and water swept trees
and rocks down the hillsides, into a
trailer park and a number of homes. Nikita, or Nikki, as everyone knows,
is a Search and Rescue Dog (German Shepherd) who takes Beverly Fitzgerald,
long time member of our DMAT, along on his escapades.This is her story...]
We were
called out Friday afternoon (Dec. 26) via a mutual aid response thru the
Sheriff's Dept., for the Waterman Incident, the name given to the Mud slide
disaster in San Bernardino. They were specifically requesting Cadaver Dogs
Teams.
We headed out about 03:00 hours to meet up with a K-9 Unit from BORSTAR (Border
Patrol), and arrived at the ICP about 05:30. We signed in, ate breakfast,
got our briefing about the incident and current conditions, including safety
hazards, ground conditions (which `were still soft mud and very thick in areas,
about ankle to knee deep at times). We were informed that they did recover two
bodies in Division D, the lower portion of the canyon (the search area that I
was assigned to) the day before. Even though they did recover two whole bodies
they were coming up with mostly "parts" in that section. Each Search Area was
approximately 1 mile long and about 200-400 yrds wide. We were to try and focus
the dogs on the "trap" points, where clumps of debris had collected, since that
was where they were finding a large number of the remains. Because of the cold
conditions, the dogs that worked the day before were right on top of the scent
before they alerted or even showed any interest. So that was how we had to work
the dogs, more directed send outs. I worked w/ Dog Team D, which included a
"live find" dog, Guinness, a yellow lab, and a "Cadaver Dog," Blaze, a border
collie.
We got to our assigned area, grabbed our gear and headed out by 0700 hrs.
We started just above the construction site at the base of the canyon. The
conveyer belt system, used to move dirt, was just torn apart. Heavy
equipment had moved hundreds of yards from their original spot, and large
boulders were piled high on top of broken trees and mud. A water truck was
practically covered and metal and rocks had been thrown thru the
front windshield. We sent the live find dog thru the area first, then the
cadaver dog would follow concentrating on specific areas of debris collection.
We would mark areas where the dogs either "showed interest" or "alerted" w/
orange tape, which would later be replaced with yellow tape if remains had been
located there. With the areas that Blaze alerted on, we would dig out as much
as we could. If we did see something, we would call it in and move on. Or we
would have Fire and the Medical Examiner remove the remains if any were found.
If we couldn't get very far we would call in a ground crew with equipment to cut
thru the logs and dig out with heavy equipment. Because some of the crews were
busy in other areas, we would call in the GPS coordinates, to dig it out at a
later time.
It was slow moving for the most part but we did get some good hits, which were
confirmed by the other dogs. We found various items, lots of tattered clothing,
children's clothes, baby diapers, toys, still wrapped Christmas gifts, pillows,
blankets, and shoes among other items. Pierre found a candle which he gave to a
grief counselor when we got back to base camp to give to the family members of
the victims. It was hard to see these things and not get emotional, but we had
our job to do and kept moving along. Some portions of the middle of Division D
were steep and we had to do a little climbing, which was taking it's toll on the
dogs and they were started to look tired. Our last big hit was about 1600 or
1630 , in one pile just before the bridge crossing at the lower portion of
Division D.
Shelly's dog, Guinness, showed a great deal of interest on this pile, but
continued on a bit and waited until Cathy's dog, Blaze, went thru to see if she
would also show interest. Blaze gave a good solid alert, and Shelly came back
to tell us that Guinness had shown more interest in this spot then in any other
area he had shown interest in today. I climbed up onto the pile of trees,
broken branches and mud, lots of mud. Within seconds of starting to pull out
branches, I saw a white kid's tennis shoe. My heart jumped up into my throat. I
paused for a second and announced my find. As I went to pull at it, it seemed
to be stuck either under a branch or was forming a suction in the mud....or it
could have been still on the child. I moved more debris away and pulled at it
again, this time it came out....it was just the tennis shoe. We continued to
move what we were able to and Tammy called for a ground crew to assist. They
weren't too far behind us and were there within minutes. We dug a little, and
would bring Blaze back to confirm that we were still where we needed to dig, as
scent travels around in this type of debris pile, but she was still alerting in
the same spot. We pulled out a Barbie doll that was unclothed and missing one
leg, a pillow, and pieces of torn clothing. Cathy and I had Blaze go around to
the back of the pile that was along the water's edge, and she again alerted
right around where the ground crew was digging. They moved what they could and
said that they would have to get chain saws in to move any more.
They called for a CDF Crew to come in, and Cathy made the decision to pull Blaze
out of the field, as she was started to show signs that she was tired. Blaze
did a great job for an 11 year old dog! The CDF crew continued to search the
pile, but Command decided to pull the crews out for the night and resume in the
morning. We started to head out on foot to meet with our ride back to ICP.
Blaze and Cathy got a ride out.
A large number of family members were at the ICP, holding photos and other
personal items and were awaiting the news conference. We ran into Donna, a
CARDA Handler from Riverside Co. She and her dog Rasta, a long haired GSD, had
made 3 finds that day up in Division A, the site where the cabins were
located....she was very emotional, as one of the victims she helped to dig out
was a little girl who was about 5 yrs old. She knew that some of the victims
that we were trying to locate were children, but didn't realize how deeply this
would affect her. She talked quite a bit about her experience with us and said
that she was going to consider returning tomorrow....she did, so I heard, but
she couldn't put in another full day on Sunday.
We headed out around 1700-1730 and I got home around 1900 hrs. I told my
roommate I was going to take a shower and head off to bed, but never made it to
that point. I laid down on the couch to rest and ended up sleeping there until
7:30 am...I guess I was more exhausted then I thought.
Our team from SD aided in locating 2 more bodies today (Sunday. Dec. 28) and
more parts in the lower portion of Division D. Sandy could neither
confirm nor deny that anything was found in our last pile....she was
almost certain that something was indeed found there, but did not know the
details. Lt. Redditt was going to try and get details of our "hits" as to
whether or not there was anything there and get back to us. This was a
difficult assignment, but all-in-all, this was a very rewarding experience.
****
--
Irving "Jake" Jacoby, MD, FACP, FACEP
Team Leader, DMAT San Diego CA-4
Attending Physician, Dept. of Emergency Medicine, UCSD Medical Center, San
Diego, CA
Associate Director, UCSD Hyperbaric Medicine Center, San Diego, CA
Clinical Professor of Medicine, UCSD School of Medicine, La Jolla, CA
200 West Arbor Drive
San Diego, CA 92103-8676
Telephone: 619-543-6216
FAX: 619-543-3115
Pager: 619-290-2700
eMail:<ca4cdr@san.rr.com>
DMAT CA-4 24 hour STATUS/Information Line: 619-543-6216