This report describes the initial hospital and burn center management of a mass casualty incident resulting from an aircraft crash and fire. One hundred thirty soldiers were injured, including 10 immediate fatalities. Womack Army Medical Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, managed the casualties and began receiving patients 15 minutes after the crash. As a result of repetitive training that i...

Emergency medical services (EMS) provide pre-hospital medical care and represent an important part of the rescue chain. The paramedic and physician’s work is characterized by regular day-to-day services as well as extraordinary missions within mass casualty incidents (MCIs). For several reasons, accessing, recording and communicating operational data are important tasks in any scenario of urgen...

STUDY OBJECTIVES To describe the incidence and epidemiology of major incidents occurring in Britain over the past 28 years. METHODS Major incidents were identified through a MEDLINE search, a hand search of journals and government reports at the Home Office Emergency Planning College, newspaper reports, a postal survey of ambulance emergency planning officers, and through requests for informa...

The article by Kaplowitz et al in this special issue of Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness describes the trauma system response to the wanton suicide shooting at Virginia Tech in April 2007.1 The authors are to be congratulated for sharing their experience so quickly, within just 3 months of the event (as of this writing), and in a manner that is consistent with the science of mas...

Addressing health disorders at the early stage during mass casualty is one of the important issues to be thrown light nowadays. If mass casualty occurs in remote locations where proper health care equipments or analysis of medical information is not available, a special team must be appointed to monitor and control it. When an emergency occurs, especially in mass casualty incidents, lots of vic...

The Institute of Medicine's Forum on Medical and Public Health Preparedness for Catastrophic Events hosted a workshop at the request of the Federal Interagency Committee on Emergency Medical Services (FICEMS) that brought together a range of stakeholders to broadly identify and confront gaps in rural infrastructure that challenge mass casualty incident (MCI) response and potential mechanisms to...

In some circumstances, burn care must be delivered in a simple manner without the luxury of modern resources. Such circumstances include care in low- and middle-income countries, war zones, and mass casualty incidents. Triage decisions need to be made carefully, allowing the focus of limited personnel and equipment on those most likely to survive. Simple techniques can be used to help many burn...