WVU Medicine Wheeling Hospital Hosts Annual Decontamination Drill

WHEELING -- WVU Medicine Wheeling Hospital personnel, the Wheeling Fire Department and the Ohio County Emergency Management Agency conducted their annual mock decontamination drill outside of the emergency room's ambulance bay on Thursday.

Firefighters set up a large yellow tent that contained a system to roll potentially contaminated patients on backboards down the middle, sort of like a car wash. Patients could also walk through.

Inside, water hoses were used to spray and clean off volunteers for the training effort -- young cadets from the Barton Volunteer Fire Department. The cadets included Pailey Rose, 13; Lexi Morrison, 13; Rocky Agostino, 5; Veronica Harris, 13; and Sarah Morrison, 11.

Wheeling Fire Department Chief Jim Blazier said the exercise is designed to train both the hospital, fire department and EMA on how to best care for a large influx of patients from an incident.

"They do have a decon shower here, but they are limited on size. We would be able to bring the mass decon shelter ... and we can decon the patients for them and then we can funnel them into the hospital for treatment," Blazier said. "The risk of taking somebody into the hospital contaminated is that now it's contaminated the emergency room, and it can shut down a portion or all of the emergency room depending on what it is."

Blazier said if the hospital had five to seven or more patients needing decontamination, the fire department could help with its mobile equipment. For example, at the scene of a multiple vehicle accident, there may be several people who have gasoline or diesel on them.

"We have not had to do it for real," he said. "We have had instances where we came over and assisted in their room, but we have not done the full-scale setup other than in training. That's why we do this every year -- to be prepared and ready to go."

Before the drill started, John Sebring, director of safety and emergency management at WVU Medicine Wheeling Hospital, told the personnel that the training was necessary because some day such an incident will happen.

"Someday it will happen here. ... We need to protect people who can't protect themselves," he said.

Douglass Harrison, president and CEO of WVU Medicine Wheeling Hospital and Reynolds Memorial Hospital, also addressed the crowd, thanking everyone for participating.

"We couldn't do this without your support," he said

Harrison added that a similar drill might be conducted at Reynolds Memorial and WVU Medicine Wetzel County Hospital in the future.