Gallatin County Awarded Mass Casualty Grant

In partnership with Park and Madison Counties, Gallatin County applied for a homeland security grant to enhance the regions capability to respond to mass casualty incidents.  We received official notification that our project has been funded and we will receive around $300,000 to enhance our capabilities.  This project will begin in October 2018 and addresses four area.  Five mass casualty trailers will be procured and positioned around the regions major travel corridors.  The trailers will contains supplies to help stabilize and manage patients at the incident site until they can be transported to a hospital.  A mass casualty bus will be procured and configured to transport 12 non-ambulatory patients and a hand full of ambulatory at the same time.  We recognize that we have limited ambulance capability in the region and that transporting large numbers of injured people often becomes a bottleneck.  Along with this the grant will provide a standardized patient triage kit for responders around the region to update the various forms currently in use.  Finally, ballistic personal protective equipment will also be procured for medical personnel following the US Department of Justice’s Rescue Task Force concept.

Training and planning activities are already underway to support this project.  We expect to begin procuring equipment this coming winter with final training and exercise taking place in summer of 2019.