Daniel MacIsaac
Northern News Services

Inuvik (Nov 12/99) - The agencies that participated in September's emergency drill in Inuvik met last week to evaluate their performances and gave themselves the thumbs-up.

The Sept. 15 simulated-emergency was the first of its kind to take place in Inuvik in a number of years. It was also the largest to date -- with hospital and ambulance staff, the Inuvik Fire Department and the RCMP all taking part and dozens of volunteers acting as victims.

Bill Wrathall, chief environmental health officer with the Inuvik Regional Health and Social Services Board, helped organize the exercise and said last Wednesday's meeting showed there's only some fine-tuning to be done by the partner agencies.

"The biggest issue from our point of view, was communication between the agencies as the disaster unfolded," he said. "There was a little bit of confusion, for example, when the triage took place over who should be doing it, the fire department or Emergency Services -- and in some cases patients were triaged twice, but I don't think that's too serious."

Wrathall said there was a greater need for communication between the staff at the hospital's control centre and its medical team at the site, and for an new radio system.

"We had an idea of how many victims were coming in through telephone calls or through the ambulance relaying information," he said.

"It worked, but we want to be more direct in a real situation, and have already ordered radios."

Fire Chief Al German said he didn't help organize the drill because he wanted to be part of it and not know what problems the scenario would offer.

"It was like three different disasters in one shot, and of course the firefighters did a great job," German said, "but because it was just an exercise we didn't have everyone away from work and available, and it was the same for the RCMP -- and full team would have made it run even smoother."

Of course, rescuers also had to use their imaginations. The disaster scenario involved a car full of drunken teens crashing into Parkview Apartments, collapsing part of the building and setting the power house on fire.

Aside from victims hanging out its windows, it wasn't immediately clear to responders that the building was part of the drill, and Wrathall said they also first had to deal with the victims on the ground.

Wrathall added that because organizers lacked the time to prepare vital-statistics cards for all the victims, doctors at the hospital also had less information on which to base their diagnoses.

"I know there was one guy who had a piece of wood sticking out of his head that they started wheeling down to the morgue," said Wrathall, "when he sat up and yelled -- I'm not dead!"

Wrathall assured, however, that all other aspects of the drill came off even better than expected and he said there is talk of making the exercise an annual event.

"There wasn't really anything we could have done to be better prepared -- maybe an extra flashlight or life vest," he said, "but I think everyone now realizes that we can handle a disaster of this magnitude.