Howard & Prince George’s Counties MAB’s participate in Baltimore Federal Coordination Center (FCC), National Disaster Medical System exercise at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport

The National Disaster Medical System (NDMS) Baltimore Federal Coordination Center (FCC) is sponsored by Maryland Veterans Administration Medical Health Care System, and Veterans Health Administration Office of Emergency Management. The Baltimore FCC sponsored a full-scale exercise, on Saturday 12 May 2012. The full-scale exercise was a multi-agency, federal, state, and local multi-jurisdictional, multi-discipline exercise involving functional emergency operation centers with patient reception, triage, treatment, transport, and tracking of mock medical evacuees to National Disaster Medical System partner hospitals. Both Howard County MAB13 and Prince George’s County MAB particated in the exercise as well as a number of private and public EMS units.

The purpose of the exercise was to evaluate the Baltimore NDMS FCC Plan, to receive medical evacuees, and to assess associated player actions against current response plans and training.

The scope of play for the Baltimore NDMS FSE required the activation of the Baltimore NDMS FCC, and implementation of the Baltimore FCC NDMS Plan through establishing a Unified Command and positioning responders in the field to perform those actions associated with NDMS activation. The scope of play for the Baltimore NDMS FSE requires command and control; communications; on-site incident management, coordination of victim reception, triage, and transport to the Maryland NDMS hospitals.

The Baltimore FCC Exercise was conducted at the Baltimore Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport at the mid field cargo area at 1200 Mathison Way, Baltimore MD on Saturday May 12th, 2012 in response to a simulated earthquake in Kansas City. It is a critical element in providing the multi-agency training necessary to ensure proficiency of collaboration efforts on the part of all of the Patient Reception team members that are required to respond to activation. During the exercise activation response personnel are able to work together to further enhance inter-service knowledge and enhance outside agency familiarization with the National Disaster Medical System.