County emergency manager praises full-scale mass-casualty drill; school reunification and communication tested

Marquette County's emergency manager described a full-scale mass-casualty exercise held May 9 that involved fire departments, EMS agencies, the sheriff's office, hospital personnel and volunteers and tested procedures for triage, transport and reunification of students with parents.

"We threw a lot of curve balls to really test," the emergency manager said, describing a simulated school-bus crash combined with other casualties that created duplicate names, sibling separation and communication shortfalls between scene command and hospitals. The exercise used colored tarps for triage levels and included helicopters, staged fatalities and hospital controllers to simulate real-world complexity.

Amanda, who briefed the committee on May deaths and supported the training effort, called the event "by far the most excellent training I've ever been to" and said the exercise will feed an after-action review and specific corrective actions including improved patient tracking, reunification plans and communication protocols.

Participants tested unified incident command (a command post staged around a pickup truck for mobility), triage training led by outside instructors, mass-casualty tabletop exercises, and coordination with mutual-aid partners. One exercise shortcoming arose when an in-transit fatality was not initially tracked to a hospital; the incident was later located after the medical examiner and command staff communicated.

The county has formed a countywide school safety team to standardize planning and reunification across individual district safety teams. Emergency management said administrators and school staff will continue training through summer months to build reunification capability.

What's next: Emergency management will complete an after-action review and return recommended changes, training rollouts and equipment needs to the committee for implementation planning.