Mass-casualty drill held at Vt. State House

By STEPHEN MILLS
Staff Writer
MONTPELIER — Breaking bad news: There was a mass-casualty incident at the State House on Friday.

The good news: It was only a drill.

Residents, workers and visitors to the city may have been surprised and alarmed at the scene on the State House lawn, when a vehicle apparently careened into a crowd of protesters at rally and injured 25 people, some fatally.

State and emergency officials were on hand to reassure the public that the event was a staged, county-wide exercise by Vermont Emergency Medical Services District 6 to test the response of emergency response plans, policies and procedures. 

Lawmakers were spared any inconvenience, with the Legislature on break this week. State Street also remained open to traffic during the exercise.

When first responders arrived on scene, they found a gray Pontiac Grand Am had swerved off State Street onto the walkway up the State House and plowed in a group of demonstrators, some of whom — dummies in reality — appeared to pinned under the car.

For some, the exercise may have been eerily similar to the Unite the Right white-supremacist and neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, when James Alex Fields Jr. deliberately rammed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 19 people.

First responders wasted no time doing on-the-spot triage, assessing the medical condition of each individual injured and assigning a priority process to evacuate them from the scene to hospital. Each patient was tagged with a label in descending order of priority: Immediate, secondary, delayed or deceased.

The exercise was under the direction of Howie McCausland, an advanced life support officer with VT EMS District 6.

“I’m responsible for the training of the more senior EMT first responders who are allowed to do more advanced care and invasive procedures,” McCausland explained. “This is a simulated, large-scale, mass-casualty incident.

“The imagined scenario is that there was a rally in front the State House, which happens every other day here, it seems, and a car went out of control and careened into the crowd.

“We’ve got many critically injured patients who were struck by the vehicle. Ambulances from all over the county are being asked to respond. This is to exercise our ability to have multiple agencies working together in concert in a coordinated fashion. We do these kinds of exercises every couple of years, just to continue to hone our skills so we can effectively respond, if, God forbid, we ever have an event like this,” he added.

Also on hand was Bill McSalis, the director of state safety and security at Buildings and General Services, Capitol Police Chief Matthew Romie and several of his officers.

“This is to simulate a mass casualty incident on the State House lawn,” Romie said.

Victims in the mock event included Gregg Stuessi, of Waterbury, who was lying in the ground, waiting for EMTs to attend to him. He said he volunteered to participate after seeing an ad in his local paper.

“We’ve never done this before and we wanted to be part of the community,” he said. “I think it’s great, it’s getting the community ready, it’s good practice for the EMTs and the ambulances, and helps to get me out of the house.”

Lying nearby was Tyler Matthews, aged 15, of Montpelier, who is enrolled at the Central Vermont Career Center at Spaulding High School in Barre.

“This helps me get community service hours to graduate, and also through tech (training); EMT training is right next to us (at the college) and I figured I would help.

“I think it’s pretty cool to do it, just in case if anything does happen, so we’re all prepared,” he added.

Also present was Carl Matteson, the emergency services instructor at CVCC, who brought some of his students to participate in the exercise.

“My whole class is here, participating as patients, and some of the students from the exploratory tech class are here as well,” Matteson said.

The exercise director was Mark Podgwaite, who is the chairman of Vermont EMS District 6 and the executive director with Waterbury Ambulance Services.

“This is a great opportunity to test our mass-casualty town and is the culmination of about six months of work,” he said. “We do it in conjunction with Central Vermont Medical Center, so they can test their emergency ops plan, as well, in a mass-casualty incident.

“We’re testing the system, looking for flaws to see what we can do better. We have a group of evaluators who are observing and will fill out reports and we’ll have an AAR (After Action Review), a whole list of stuff on what went well and what we need to improve,” he added.

Montpelier Fire Chief Bob Gowans was present, but said he left the leadership role to his second-in-command, Deputy Fire Chief James Quinn, and others so they could gain experience.

“It’s a really important exercise, it tests our district resources and gives us a sense of what one of these events looks like,” Quinn said. “It’s obviously a huge challenge for any of our services … so the opportunity to come together is very valuable.”

Barre Deputy Fire Chief Joseph Aldsworth added: “In conjunction with the hospital, we’re testing the system to see our limitations and to improve things. Some of the players today — from Waterbury to Mad River to Northfield — their call volumes aren’t as high as some of the cities, so to give them some hands-on practice in the mass-casualty incident is really important. I think it’s going really well and we’re adapting to things that we’ve seen with our shortcomings and we’re going to much improve the system in the end.”

At the end of the exercise, McCausland said he was “genuinely pleased” with the success of the exercise and the training provided for first responders.

“There were a couple of decisions that were made that I want to understand better,” McCausland added. “Our goal, actually, is to have mistakes made and problems show up at these exercises, so we know how to focus our training for the next time.”

Agencies taking part included: Barre City, Barre Town, East Montpelier, Mad River Valley, Middlesex, Montpelier, Northfield, Plainfield, Washington, Waterbury, Williamstown, Worcester, as well as the Capital Police, Central Vermont Medical Center and the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Advanced Response Team.