A disaster can strike at any time and this morning it did on Freetown Road – or for a few minutes those in the area thought it did. It was a disaster simulation coordinated by the Belize Emergency Response Team – BERT. It was the worse case scenario on the normally busy Freetown Road but planners say it can happen. Javier Canul is the Educational Coordinator at BERT.
Michael Pratt, BERT Ambulance Medic
“There were approximately seven personnel involved in the scenario. We made it as real as possible to simulate a real live road trafficking scenario.”
Javier Canul, Educational Coordinator - BERT
“Because you are aware it is Easter time and as a result of that we know there will be people travelling from north to south, east to west, all over the place and there is always traffic accidents happening. It might not be your fault but it might be the other person’s fault. So that is the
reason why we put this together for people to be aware.”
Michael Pratt,
“With this constant practice here, especially in collaboration with the KHMH, we would just become better and better and better at allieving injuries that people might have in these incidents that might occur at anytime.”
Javier Canul,
“We have a three vehicle collision and we had approximately eight patients with all different of injuries; eviscerations, the spinal columns, we had a tracheal deviation, meaning that the wind pipe went to the side. We had wounds like fractured femur and this exercise has been put together basically by the entities to see how we could work as one unit.
From our location, from BERT’s perspective, we put it together just to get the medics up to par ever now and again. Simulations are created to work on our mistakes. So in all simulations there are always mistakes but that is why we have simulations.”
Simulations are conducted frequently.
