Decontamination drill held at Colfax hospital

Nathan Kubej, recent WSU graduate and PT intern at WHMC, is hosed off in the decontamination tent Tuesday by Bruce Haley, who heads security at the hospital and organized the decontamination drill.

At top: Colfax firefighter Randy Miller hooks up a fire hose to the hydrant in the WHMC parking lot while firefighter David Buckley looks on Tuesday afternoon. Above: Hoses hang from the inside of the decontamination tent, which is supplied water via hoses hooked up to either a garden hose or fire hose on a fire hydrant.

Whitman Hospital and Medical Center employees are now a little more prepared if a case ever arises where a mass decontamination is needed.

Employees Tuesday took part in a decontamination drill aimed at helping employees there be prepared in the event a large-scale decontamination becomes necessary.

“It's more of a training exercise than a full-fledged drill,” said Bruce Haley, who heads security at the hospital. “It is very important. You want to train for it before you need it.”

The drill proved to not only be beneficial for employees to learn more about the decontamination process and setting up a tent for mass decontamination, but also for taking a look at the equipment.

“The pump heater is broken,” Haley told those in attendance after the first attempt. “It's a bad leak.”

The fire hose which Colfax firefighters had attempted to hook to the pump had to be removed in order for a garden hose to be hooked to it instead.

“We just got a different coupling for a valve that's on the hydrant,” said Haley. “It's designed to run off a garden hose or preferably a fire hose.”

Running it off of a garden hose meant the water pressure was lower than it would have been otherwise, but it still worked.

“Now we know we'll fix it,” said Haley. “That's part of the reason why we train.”

Some employees got to try their hand at using the fire hose, while others got to be “decontaminated” inside the tent.

Members of the police and fire departments were on hand to assist with the drill, which Haley said helped to make it a great community event.

Haley said his aim was to be able to make the drill a mix of seriousness and fun at the same time.

“We want to train the staff, but make it fun,” he said. “We're just taking this opportunity to train the staff.”

The tent was set up in the parking lot of the hospital, and the drill took a little more than an hour with set up and run through. Haley said the purpose of the decontamination tent is to prevent those who are in need of decontamination from entering the hospital with harmful chemicals. He said there is also a small decontamination room outside of the hospital that can be used for smaller decontaminations.

Those in need of decontamination can either be walked through the tent, or they can be moved through on backboards via a conveyor system, which was not set up during the drill. Sprinklers in the tent can also either be partially shut off or completely shut off, and hoses on the outside of the tent can be capped off as well. Haley said all of this helps to make the tent customizable depending on the need for it.

“It's for what we don't ever want to happen,” Haley said of the training. The hospital has two decontamination tents, both of which have never had to be used.