Emergency workers recently evacuated people to safety and treated those wounded in a mass-casualty event in the Chilean city of Las Condes.
Luckily, no one was actually hurt, since the rescue operation was a training simulation directed by Israeli national emergency service Magen David Adom.
The rescue operation was the highlight of a four-day workshop on managing mass-casualty events initiated by the Israeli Embassy in Santiago. Some 100 participants from the Chilean ambulance services, firefighting forces, army, police, local hospitals and Las Condes City Hall took part in the workshop.
They learned about MDA’s mass-casualty event management, directing local teams and putting together a domestic model for such crisis management.
The simulation involved evacuating Las Condes’ 15-story City Hall. Three firefighting departments, a command post from Santiago Province’s health department, volunteer psychologists, local Red Cross personnel and ambulances from 10 organizations took part in the event – the first inter-organizational exercise of this magnitude.
Magen David Adom has been working with SAMU, Chile’s public emergency medicine services, since the 1990s, when it became a partner in establishing various services, training programs and conferences.
“Magen David Adom is part of the International Red Cross organization and is always ready to reach out and help anywhere in the world,” said MDA director Eli Bin.
“Chile needs a strong system capable of dealing with disaster events, we’re happy to contribute from our experience to the improvement and strengthening of the emergency medical system there,” Bin said.
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