Tuesday, July 12, 2005 | 9:16 a.m.
Early Monday morning personnel from 78 local, state and federal agencies started dealing with a chemical explosion at the Thomas & Mack Center, a bombing at the Bellagio and a report of anthrax -- all fictional terrorist scenarios that are part of an emergency training exercise that continues through Thursday.
The hub of the activity was the staging area of the Las Vegas Convention Center, where medical personnel treated the wounded who came in screaming with fake blood gushing out of synthetic wounds. At the same time triage was set up in part of the large room, to deal with the casualties that were expected as a result of an 6.7 magnitude earthquake that hit the valley at about 1 p.m. as part of the drill.
"We're actually exercising a mass casualty plan," said Jane Shunney, Clark County Health District public health preparedness manager. She said the point of the exercise was to find out how long it takes to set up a system to deal with mass casualties.
She said Monday that it was taking longer than had been expected.
The teams will have to deal with six simulated emergencies before the training ends sometime on Thursday, officials said.
The program was funded by a $2 million grant from the Department of Homeland Security to the state for statewide emergency training. Clark County requested $500,000 of the grant to conduct the training exercise. The primary participants in the event are Clark County emergency crews, ambulance teams and health district personnel, as well as hospital staff from eight hospitals and 11 UMC Quick Care facilities. About 80 actors were hired to portray people who were wounded in the simulated attacks.
Between the earthquake and terrorist attacks, the agencies at the exercise had a lot to deal with.
"It's almost biblical in proportion when you put all the pieces together," said Carolyn Levering, the plans and operations coordinator for the Office of Emergency Management.
By creating this kind of a situation, medical personal and law enforcement learn how communicate and coordinate while under pressure, said Samantha L. Charles, a public information officer for Clark County.
"With these types of exercises, by taxing ourselves to that degree really gives us the opportunity to test ourselves in the biggest way possible," Charles said.
Earlier in the morning the Clark County Coroner's office and the 355th Army Reserve unit decontaminated bodies that had been part of a chemical attack at the Thomas & Mack during a concert over the weekend. About 500 people were "killed" during the simulated incident, and each one had to be examined for contamination. They either died from the initial explosion, were trampled on while trying to escape the venue or from an aerosol chemical that was sprayed in the air.
About 25 mannequins were used in place of real dead bodies and were decontaminated using an assembly-line process. First the "remains" were brought in to the convention center in a refrigerated unit. Then personal items, like clothing, were removed from the bodies before they were put through a three-stage cleansing process.
If the bodies had been real, the next step would have been to send them back to the morgue so that next-of-kin could identify the remains. But, since they were just dummies, the mannequins were redressed and sent through the process again.
Clark County Corner Mike Murphy said he didn't know how many bodies had been decontaminated on Monday morning, but estimated that with the help of the 355th Army Reserve unit, the coroner's office could decontaminate 500 bodies in three to five days.
Crews continued to work at the site until 6 p.m. Monday when another group came on to relieve the people that had been working for 12 hours. The shifts will continue until the exercise is over on Thursday.
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