Interactive Ready for Review: Interactivities

At a incident, safety--of you and your team, the patient, and the public--is your most important concern.

If you arrive first, assess the situation, taking care to protect yourself, and then call for a trained HazMat team.

The most important step in such an incident is to identify the substances involved. Do not enter the ; your job is to provide supportive care once the patient can be safely moved out of the area.

Hazardous materials are classified according to five toxicity levels.

Four protection levels are indicated for the amount and type of protective gear you need. Levels indicate the amount and type of protective gear that you need to prevent injury from a particular substance.

Most serious injuries and deaths from hazardous materials incidents result from .

Patients' injuries should be treated in the same way that you would treat any injury.

Resources for HazMat incidents include the Emergency Response Guidebook and The Chemical Transportation Emergency Center (CHEMTREC). CHEMTREC is open 24 hours a day to help you identify and handle hazardous materials transport incidents.

allow for coordination of police, fire, and EMS activities in an emergency situation. In major incidents, there is usually a unified command, with a single command post where decisions are made by agency leaders.

If your unit arrives first at an incident that will involve more than one unit or agency, command should be established. Otherwise, you should report to the command post for assignment.

You may be assigned to one of the following sectors: staging, extrication, triage, treatment, supply, transportation, or rehabilitation.

In a , the most highly trained medical person on the scene directs . This means assigning treatment and transport priorities according to the severity and survivability of patients' injuries.

There are four triage levels, each with a separate treatment area. Highest priority is given to patients whose injuries are critical but probably survivable with prompt treatment.

The cardinal rule of triage is to do the greatest good for the greatest number. Treatment and triage continue until all patients have been transported.

In urban areas with special treatment centers, special protocols are used to triage patients with specific injuries to the appropriate centers.

Communication with medical control is essential for good triage.

are widespread events that can threaten lives and property, and sometimes can cause personal injuries.

The incident command system is used for disasters just as for other types of mass-casualty incidents. However, if the number of patients overwhelms the area's hospitals, an alternate facility and can be set up for triage and treatment.