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Courses merge for Integrated Capstone Event

The first Integrated Capstone Event of 2014 merged students from a variety of disciplines at FEMA's Center for Domestic Preparedness (CDP).

Healthcare professionals, fire fighters, law enforcement, and multiple other responses disciplines came together for a final end-of-course Integrated Capstone Event. Nearly 100 students worked together in response to the hazardous materials incident involving mass casualties.

Hundreds are injured, some severe, and require students attending healthcare training to activate the hospital's EOC and standby by for multiple patients from the incident. The hospital also activates its Hospital Emergency Response Team, who stands ready to decontaminate the injured arriving at the Noble Training Facility (NTF) for care. The NTF is the only hospital in the nation solely dedicated to training healthcare professionals for mass casualty response. Two healthcare courses, Hospital Emergency Response Training (HERT) and Healthcare Leadership for Mass Casualty Incidents (HCL) joined together in response to the unfolding event.

ICE training integrates courses and simulates a multi-disciplined response. Each scenario focuses on the foundations of CDP training-incident management, mass casualty response, and emergency response to a catastrophic natural disaster or terrorist act. The ICE is a unique training approach in which students from the various courses work together in a single end-of-course exercise. ICE events may include students from up to ten different disciplines -ranging from law enforcement to healthcare. The students interact, communicate, and respond to a full-impact mass casualty incident.

More than 30 role player/actors (RPA) were used as survivors during the ICE, adding to the realism of the event, in what feels like a very real scenario. The role players performed 140 roles and by the time controllers ended the exercise the students had treated and released 125 RPAs.