Tilton Building Evacuation Drill - Tilton Building - Governor Bacon Health Center
December 16, 2008
On Thursday, October 28, 2008 Officers, Members & Career Staff of the Delaware City and Port Penn Fire Companies participated this morning in a regional exercise with DEMA & FEMA Region III. This sub-exercise included a scenario location of the Tilton Building located on the grounds of the Governor Bacon Health Center. Temperatures were in the 90's in middle of a lengthy heat-wave in mid-August. This heat-wave struck the entire mid-atlantic region during this time span which contributed to rolling blackouts of the entire area. After three consecutive days of being on back-up power, the Tilton Building lost their back-up supply, & management was forced to evacuate the 85 residents & 9-1-1 was initiated by management to request assistance with this task.
Fire Department personnel worked together collectively with the Governor Bacon Health Center Staff, Division of Public Health & New Castle County Office of Emergency Management removing 85 patients (volunteers were serving as patients) from the building in preparation of transport to the Delaware Hospital of Chronically ILL in Smyrna, DE. Due to power being lost at the facility there was no elevator service within the building & all the patients had to be removed manually with the use of stair-chairs via internal stairwells of the building. This training exercise provided a great opportunity for our members to continue our high standards of training within the use of NIMS as well as handling a mass casuality incident in a controlled setting.
Chief Rosseel would like to thank all the members and other agencies that participated.