LOST BRIDGE — Two emergency medical technicians in a boat rushed to a cove on Beaver Lake Saturday morning.

There, in the quiet cove, floated a pontoon. A man was floating in the water.

Nearby, a man was lying on a dock.

The boat with the medical personnel pulled up next to the pontoon. Matt Fry and Wade Canfield climbed aboard and rushed to the side of the boat grabbing the man who was floating in the water and maneuvered him around to the back of the boat to pull him aboard.

“Bring us a backboard,” Fry called to Lee Osterfeld on the approaching boat.

More EMTs arrived and checked the other “patients” on the boat.

“That boat is sinking and gas is leaking. Get them off that boat,” called Tom Scantlin, EMT and battalion chief for Northeast Benton County Volunteer Fire/EMS Department.

“Come around here and pick up these people,” Scantlin called to Osterfeld.

The men were part of a mass casualty simulation training exercise.

“Station eight, respond to Lost Bridge Marina for a boat hit by a jet ski ... There are an unknown number of patients,” was the first call from NEBCO Capt. Nick Mason.

As his voice crackled over the radio Saturday morning, more than a dozen firefighters and medical personnel from NEBCO descended on Beaver Lake near Lost Bridge. Mason, a paramedic, was teaching the group. Although personnel knew it was training, none of them knew the exact scenario that was to unfold before them, he said.

Both boats - Units 871 and 872 - launched Saturday morning waiting to hear where their destination was. Firefighters and medics drove the ambulance and fire trucks to the boat ramp, awaiting instructions.

Out on the lake in his boat, Scantlin, headed to the scene: “I just show up ... I’ve done this twice already this year.” Scantlin recalled a couple of real medical emergencies earlier this year.

“This is Marina Road command,” Corey Cannon, NEBCO captain and emergency medical technician, announced over the radio. He instructed the personnel on their next move.

One of the “patients” (Chris Vitali) tells Canfield there was another person on the boat who is missing.

One patient (LeAnn McCuistion, 17, of Rogers) simulates breathing difficulty and is said to have facial lacerations while another (Andy Driggs) appears to have a head injury.

The patient - Driggs - is placed on a backboard and put on the NEBCO boat to be taken to the boat ramp to meet with the ambulance.

Others return to the scene to cordon it off to search for the missing person.

“You have one black (deceased) and one yellow (injured needingassistance),” a voice calls over the radio to Cannon.

Within an hour, all personnel are back at the dock. The patients are walking around. Everyone is discussing the exercise and contemplating how it could be improved.

The triage colors designate care levels - black is deceased, red is the most critical, yellow is injured and green is walking wounded, Mason explained.

The exercise ended. The group reassembled to evaluate the morning’s events.

“This went really well.

They worked with what they had,” Mason said.

“Go big. Go early - if you think about it, call for help on the front end ...

“It’s hard, intensive labor ... CENCOM will do better than I did. It will be chaotic. Think ahead of time where you will stage family members and the media,” he told everyone when they gathered afterwards for a briefing.

The training providedadditional training hours as required for both the medics and the firefighters, Mason said.

“This is all about resource management,” Mason said, and about providing “better triage.”

Mason said often there are multi-agency drills and that, although they simulated calling other agencies, none were involved in thisexercise.

“We want to know how to prepare ourselves,” he said.

Other NEBCO personnel involved in the training included Devin Morgan, firefighter; Richard Funk, firefighter/EMT; Jim Kippen, firefighter; John Testutt, fireboat captain; Brandon Howard, paramedic; Andrew Schacherbauer, EMT;

and Martin Schoenecker.

News, Pages 1 on 08/31/2011