Metro Atlanta prepares for mass casualty incidents with new MAB buses
Posted: Jul 07, 2013 11:44 PM EDT
Updated: Jul 07, 2013 11:52 PM EDT
By Sonia Moghe
ATLANTA (CBS ATLANTA) –
Imagine having to send one ambulance for each victim to the scene of a plane crash.
In the case of Saturday’s crash at San Francisco International Airport, that would be more than 180 ambulances.
But Metro Atlanta has two new tools that could help out in the event of a mass casualty incident like a plane crash or the Boston Marathon bombings, where three people were killed and 160 people were injured. Thanks to federal grants, both Atlanta and Gwinnett County now each house a new Medical Ambulance Bus or MAB.
Roosevelt Snowden, an emergency medical services official with the City of Atlanta, showed Atlanta’s bus exclusively to CBS Atlanta, and said the buses are meant to treat patients who are injured and in stable condition, meaning they don’t need constant care by a medical professional.
Snowden said that each MAB would help out in the event of an accident that has a large number of people injured.
“Say we had a mass casualty incident anywhere within the city limits – we would have the ability to take the mass casualty ambulance bus to that scene and still be able to provide the services for the 911 system,” Snowden said. “Because those seizure calls, those heart attack calls, they don’t stop when a mass casualty incident occurs – they still keep coming in. This takes some of the stress and strain off of the 911 system.”
The buses, which are essentially large ambulances that can seat many more patients, can treat 12 trauma patients who need to be on stretchers, or 16 patients who have less serious injuries and can sit on benches in seat belts.
Atlanta’s bus is already stocked with basic first-aid supplies, oxygen and wireless vital sign monitoring devices that can take each patient’s blood pressure, blood oxygen levels and EKG information and send it to a centralized computer so that the three or four paramedics inside the bus can monitor their vital signs all at once.
“This unit serves as a perfect unit to transport those patients that have evacuated themselves from the scene, do not have life-threatening injuries, but may require some medical attention nonetheless,” Snowden said.
The bus was already on stand-by for Thursday’s Peachtree Road Race.
