Price Of Survival (1967)

[Music] this is looking South on Branch Road about 10:29 a.m. you can see the funnel touching down on the outskirts of town here's the monster still moving Northeast about 10:31 just 2 minutes later that's one of our ambulances on its way to pick up casualties this is looking West on 4th Street about 10:42 there are people under that funnel this is one of the emergency vehicles we're following the path of destruction and trying to keep track of the [Music] direction there's Simmons chemical here we had most of our casualties by 11:00 when this was taken we had four fire companies here and our rescue [Music] units the men in white suits are civil defense rescue teams [Music] we had every available Fire Company here that's the mayor he's making a quick survey of damage to the city he's trying to determine whether or not to ask the governor to declare the area disaster so we can get more help you see women trying to find out HBS are among the dead we were lucky to have the facilities of a snork or get into the smoldering emers and make sure the fire was dead out this is the explosion area where wind knocked over a tank and it blew up adding that much more Habit to that caused by the funnel some of the casualties needed Immediate Care at the explosion site here you see rescue workers trying to get people out from under that debris despite the quick response of firefighters and rescue teams we needed help and we were lucky that so many Flack workers kept their heads stayed and help with the rescue work here again women trying to get to the injur there were many killed it was a sorrowful time for those who arrived at the scene and found that a member of their family had been a victim of the disaster we didn't know how many more casualties would be under the debris in another part of the plant which had sustained only wind damage we set up a first aid station where ambulances and other vehicles could get to the casualties get in and get them out to a hospital if necessary Spectators and relatives trying to get to and find their loved ones caused a continuing traffic problem and there was no getting them out of the way there's Dr Ryan he was everywhere tending to be injured wherever we went the ever presentent problem of spectators trying to finders of the family we were making use of any vehicle we could get our hands on even private automobiles the entered the Dead The Rescuers the Frantic effort to retrieve life to preserve it we respond almost by by Instinct with total maximum effort there's no holding back in an emergency like this you give everything you've got it's the price you [Music] pay Memorial Hospital the city's larest at 115 this Thursday morning the staff is attempting to provide a quality standard of care for all casualties and their hospital is damaged without City Light or power to the emergency Richard Barnes administrator at Memorial he has to be everywhere at once this morning as his Hospital strains to meet this emergency what about this power prop promise to turn this on in a couple of minutes the generator's working but it's only emergency lighting the elevators are still out right oh hi Dick I had him paid you you know anything yet or how many we can expect we haven't been able to reach the we're getting a lot of casualties from other parts of town Mr Barnes should we use the emergency an to send the discharge patient no I want those units kept right here until we sure all the casualties are in lobby to telephone home or telephone a c and get them out here as you can yes sir right we had five injuries right here in the hospital cut by glass preg with this patient load how many beds are we going to need well let's see we had uh we had three doas fired here I'd say probably oh let's say at least 25 more anyway we got some pretty bad burn cases from the chemical plant we must have had a pretty hard time up there one of the tanks was damaged and it blew up I was just going outside but was in the tank Richard Barnes can't stay to find out with casualties arriving from all over the city he has to keep moving to stay on top of a fast changing situation where should the ambulances be sent how many more patients will need care will the supplies hold out without communication he can only guess we're still having problems getting through oh the police called there are more casualties on the way where do we stand on sta all available interns and residents are on duty and most of the off duty nurses have come in we did talk to Garden Hospital they've got all they can handle over there too this is Thursday let's plan to discuss this Communications problem and these other difficulties at the staff meeting on Monday wait I'm I'm getting through it's the plant hello hello this is Memorial Hospital calling let me talk to hello this is urgent yes yes I know that but they hung up on us keep [Music] trying well if serious enough to war evacuation if they don't close off the valves I'll recommend we Evacuate the whole east side of town well we should know something in five minutes this is Dr James Hickman the city's Public Health officer he has expert knowledge of the medical implications of This Disaster he will have a crucial role in averting further casualties at the improvised aid station the casualties continue to arrive from the explosion site they are cared for given transportation to Memorial Hospital by ambulances private Automobiles and station wagons Tom Ryan is a plastic surgeon but this morning he's very much in general practice he must care for the injured with limited professional assistance relatives of the plant workers and others pitch in and help fortunately Dr Ryan's experience on the medical society's disaster committee has prepared him for some of the difficulties he's meeting do Paul's not my Hospital these patients have got to go to Memorial now you know the way don't you give this envelope to the admitting position and write this down tell him we'll be sending Memorial at least eight more bad Burns eight and four serious traumas okay go ahead Monday morning just after 10: workmen were busy replacing glass in the main lobby of Memorial Hospital at the same time the regular Monday meeting of the hospital staff this office commends the medical family of the city we are most pleased with the outstanding performance by the staff of Memorial Hospital in meeting this emergency once again Memorial has rendered valuable service to this community with regard to any suggestions you may have for improvement of emergency Health Services Dr Hickman has assured me he will be happy to discuss this with you with sincere appreciation Ralph W Lewis May the mayor seems to think we're pretty good and I agree of course I know that we were lucky that's true if the tornado had turned North it would have gone right through town I mean we were lucky now we're devoting this meeting to disaster Readiness to find out what you think of our performance last week not just this hospital but the whole Medical Response frankly if things had been any worse I'm afraid we'd have been in deep trouble now da you're going to have to clarify that you know as well as we all know that every Casualty that came in here received the best possible attention that is no no question about that the treatment was excellent whether the patients were handled in terms of immediate needs is another matter we could have done better let me finish we ought to establish sorting triage from the moment the first casualty is admitted we didn't need sorting we weren't dealing in Mass casualties weren't we we had no way of knowing for a good 40 minutes we couldn't estimate how many more casualties were going to come in we admitted 42 and all plus five injured years it could have been 82 100 or even 200 why didn't we know didn't we have communication with the disaster areas I mean the plant the Fourth Street school and the downtown areas for that I'd like to answer that as disaster committee chairman I was at one site or the other all the time I couldn't get through to Memorial until after the last casualties had been put aboard ambulances Dr was the police two-way radio made available to you I found the police very Cooperative the problem was to find a squad car near our Aid area that wasn't you've started something Mr Barnes you know your staff they're still close enough to the shock and confusion of last week to be just a little scared at what might have happened if the tornado had turned North or if it came at night with no light no power as recently as three months ago I remember we decided we couldn't afford any more generating equipment that's true today I'm sure we decide differently and chalk it up to the high cost of survival I'm sure there are a great many things that can be done in this hospital to ensure a better state of Readiness and evidently we've got a long way to go in coordinating the whole medical effort But Where Do We Begin where do we go from here the price of survival mankind has paid it over and over for the sake of life we pay it willingly We Gather our injured and bind their wounds we bury our dead we rebuild and next time we think we will know better how to cope with disaster so destructive so viciously unpredictable next time sometimes because as we haven't planned for disaster the price we pay is far greater than it has to be so much bravery deserves preparedness but in the face of disaster ready or not we pay the price if we can in The Chronicles of disaster our City's experience was a minor entry but it was enough to make us realize that special effort must be devoted to Emergency Services next time it might not be so easy to pick up the pieces looking at the problem Citywide the mayor and Council were just as concerned as we were at the hospital right after the tornado we got two new bulldozers to speed clearance of debris at the same time a new director for civil defense came on duty a trained full-time administrator with energetic leadership The Fallout shelter program including the marking and stocking of supplies that we had started a couple of years back was finally pushed to completion the city began to accumulate additional stocks of Emergency Food Supplies against Natural Disasters at first glance the list of emergency services seemed almost too elaborate but even for a city the size of ours everyone was essential and that's how we three found ourselves kneed deep in disaster planning with a mandate from the mayor to get emergency Health Services organized I was tapped along with Tom Ryan who is Chairman of the medical society's disaster committee Jim Hickman our Public Health officer has an expert knowledge of preventive medicine and he works continuously with different city departments we soon began to realize that no one had ever tackled this problem before we could study existing plans but there was no ready to meet the specific ific needs disaster hazards we were subject to the facilities and resources we could Marshal some work had been done each of the three hospitals in the area had a disaster plan but none of us had ever considered gearing our plan to the other two we had a long way to go before we could call it a community plan so we started with simple basic questions so simple no one had ever asked them before were stretches interchangeable between ambulances and what about the Emergency Equipment on our vehicles one point in our favor many other people were just as concerned as we were about the problem at first wherever we went surveying our vulnerability to disaster or examining medical facilities we had good cooperation then as memory of the tornado began to fade with it went some of the eagerness people would talk to us if it wouldn't take too much time or cost any money in the field of medicine and health working with other Physicians and Hospital people we got a great deal accomplished quickly we were dealing with colleagues people we knew in terms of specialized needs we both understood we soon drew the local Nurses Association into active support with the assistance of the medical society we soon had a record of every physician residing in the area and we set up a running inventory of the available medical supplies including Biologicals and pharmaceuticals this included the stocks in drug and surgical supply houses we found the State Health Department of the Red Cross were useful sources of information at the systems it's very easy to construct and Chester would you and Larry come up and help us demonstrate this method fundamentals are again very easy to perform but they are students in this medical self-help course are maintenance kitchen help office workers the ancillary staff of the hospital all right Carn if you'd come up and help us demonstrate this do not be afraid that the folded blanket will fall because the weight of the engineed person will hold it Perman in place all right good may you and Chester will pick her up now and transport to the back of the room just like you were transport an injured person with this basic training they can function as AIDS in time of disaster that's very good car you look like you've been hit we even managed to get a package disaster Hospital located in our area operating room suites by the way in each pdh each hospital is packaged in some 660 cases such as this and they're prepositioned in every state throughout the country a complete 200 bed hospital in about 650 crates with it came a training course for Physicians nurses and other Hospital Personnel our disaster casualty potential far exceeds the normal bed capacity of our in about 6 weeks we had started on a number of different activities we had accumulated a lot of data and we were beginning to gain a basic understanding of what we'd have to work with medically speaking in a disaster it was when we began to reach outside the area of medicine to draw on other community services that had got more complicated listen we've got to line up an emergency food supply for a hospital population of 600 that includes patients and staff for approximately eight days but this does come under the city's plan for natural disasters that the mayor's office said the they need food Transportation a Communications Network without this kind of support their emergency health plan wouldn't be worth the paper it was written on this problem of communication to take one example they agreed it should be a simple matter to link the three hospitals in the area with a disaster site then they could control the floow of casualties manage their resources more effectively it seemed simple until they talked it over with the police department you can see how tied up the board is now this is just everyday routine you can imagine how busy this thing would be in an emergency like you're talking about how would you go about raiding one priority call over another medical call yes and there's another problem Doc How would the police officer the seeing know which doctors authorized to make calls all right let's take an actual emergency situation now the police are the first ones usually to the site we learned that the Municipal Police Department and the County Sheriff's Office broadcast on different frequencies but then we were learning a lot of things we hadn't known before there was no problem we couldn't work out it took more time more digging and it forced us to think in terms of the obstinate realities of disaster we reviewed our plans with the mayor's Transportation advisers another of the civil defense Emergency Services me members included the biggest trucking companies in the city and the chief of the County Road Department we must have trucks and drivers immediately post disaster to move emergency medical supplies sanitation equipment personnel and perhaps even casualties you say here you'll need six 2 and 1/2 ton trucks and drivers you're going to have to cut that figure in half at least do we've got three hospitals to take care of and we're not asking for any additional ambulance that's a rock bottom figure every truck we can lay our hands on is already committed to emergency service of one kind or another we need uh trucks to clear debris evacuate survivors bring in food supplies you see doc you're not the only people in the disaster business hello Memorial Hospital calling a simulated emergency drill is underway we're going to need every single person we can get down here yes sir and be sure that all the main arteries through the center of town are clear because we're going to have emergency units going through there yes sir it's 11:04 our test has been underway for 10 minutes emergency units are now moving along the main streets toward the disaster area all other traffic has been stopped mayor I just received word that one of our other ambulances had just passed through the square and it should be here at the disaster scene in a minute now that's fine I will you check back now and see whether there any more disaster units on the way yes sir good Z4 base it's a full scale disaster drill he [Music] for the first time the health service plan we developed is being tested together with the other Emergency Services all of that coordination we worked on so painfully is starting to pay off we have our communication system working with the help of civil defense this particular unit is courtesy of a local cab company and we have the police radio tied in two whenever we need very few with third got 15 hit flying de bre some of mulle injuries in concussions compound fraction and head injuries 62 this man has a sucking wound of the chest send him to Memorial Hospital please this test is as realistic as we can make it realistic to the point where we can estimate just how effective we'd be in an actual crisis and so the last litter Bearer can see for himself something of his part in the whole rescue operation this time it's a test next time it may be for real in one way or another cities across the land have awakened to this need and the key role that the emergency Health Service must assume sometimes it's a drill that sets off the sirens sometimes it's a real emergency the ultimate test of how well your community has prepared for disaster it's nothing new faced with the choice of Sur survival or Extinction man will always choose to live sometimes the price he pays is greater sometimes less it has never been a bargain the lesson we learned was that it doesn't matter where you begin the important thing is to begin it took a tornado to wake us up but in a way we were lucky it could have been far worse what is the price of survival for you for your city your community how do you choose to meet it these questions are yours to answer [Music]