Return to Pointer View home page August 26,  2005

KACH prepares for Sept. 2 MASCAL exercise 

By Spc. Benjamin Gruver
Staff Writer 

Keller Army Community Hospital will be closed Sept. 2 while its medical personnel take part in a mass casualty exercise intended to familiarize its staff with all aspects of the hospital’s MASCAL procedures.

The emergency room will remain open while the areas in and around the hospital will be active with both round robin training and taking care of 50 volunteer victims during the simulation.

Community members are asked not to be alarmed by the activity of emergency vehicles and the blue decontamination tent that will be located in front of the hospital.

“This is hospital driven,” said Capt. Shawn Rickett, chief of planning, training, mobilization and security. “We are not really looking for involvement of other agencies or organizations on post. We have other exercises throughout the year that we interact with the other agencies. This is an exercise for the hospital to keep up their skills and the teams to work on their team building operations.”

The exercise is also a benefit to new personnel, as every year people leave and new people come in, but according to Joseph Pfanzelter, KACH’s emergency management director, it will also train individuals to know how to operate in each of the different MASCAL stations.

“Everybody has their jobs that they do and in the hospital it is all medical, working with and taking care of patients,” Pfanzelter said. “So you don’t have a lot of time to think about this type of thing. If you do these exercises then at least we can keep it in the back of everybody’s mind that this kind of thing could happen and we can put them in a situation that they have to deal with it. Then if it really does happen, at least you could think back and say ‘Oh yeah, I remember when I did this in an exercise in September.’”

It will also be a benefit to the civilian workforce at KACH because it is on a workday.

“Typically the big post exercises are done on weekends, so we don’t have the civilian staff here to work it,” Pfanzelter said. “So we are doing it on a work day so the civilian staff can get involved.”

There is still a need for volunteers, explained Rickett.

Every volunteer relieves one of the medical personnel from that duty and gives them a chance to participate in the training.

Those that are participating as victims will need to be available from 11 a.m. until the exercise is over, which is expected to be no later than 5 p.m.

Volunteers should call Pfanzelter at 938-8928.