March hosts Mobile Field Hospital training

  • Published
  • By Will Alexander
  • 452 Air Mobility Wing, Public Affairs
MARCH AIR RESERVE BASE, CALIF. --  While the Emergency Operations Center became the nerve center for March ARB's response to a 7.8 magnitude earthquake during Golden Guardian, the California Emergency Medical Services Authority (EMSA) put its responders through the wringer at a 200-bed mobile field hospital just a few blocks away. 

The fully functional hospital, one of three owned by the state, was the Regional Training Site for this year's EMSA Field Training Event, conducted in conjunction with Golden Guardian 2008. 

March ARB was host to medical professionals from various agencies throughout Southern California who deployed here to conduct training designed to iron out any wrinkles in the state's emergency response system. 

"We successfully deployed, set up, supported, and then demobilized the second of our Mobile Field Hospitals (MFH)," said Ann Bybee, event director. "Through the work of Scripps Health, we developed and delivered top quality MFH training to about 120 medical and administrative members of the CAL-MAT and HASU teams. 

The EMSA stood up a 40-member Mission Support Team (MST), who worked with members of the 163 RW and 452 AMW to support 10 days of on-site activities, according to Bybee. 

She said training involved transportation, security and police services, protocol/public affairs, and emergency management. 

Riverside County recruited over a hundred volunteers to act as "moulaged" hospital patients or to participate in ambulance strike teams, while the CHP provided police escort services and ground security for the MFH. 

"Over 300 visitors, including some very critical high-level members of the governor's cabinet, came to two different public events to see the capabilities and functionalities of the MFH," said Bybee. "The 163rd's mobile field kitchen crews fed all participants so well that everyone went home a few pounds heavier. 

"If every hosting entity could be so easy and so gracious," said Bybee, " planning and executing these detail-burdened events each year would be so easy."