Mass casualty decontamination first aid

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The findings presented in this report indicate that casualties involved in a HazMat/CBRN MCI in a typical community would not receive sufficient on-scene care because of operational delays that are integral to a standard HazMat/CBRN first response. This delay in response will mean that casualty care will shift away from the incident scene into already over-tasked health care facilities as casualties seek aid on their own. The self-care decontamination protocols recommended in the report present a viable option to ensure decontamination is completed in the field at the incident scene, and that casualties are cared for more quickly and less traumatically than they would be otherwise. Introducing self-care decontamination procedures as a standard first response within the response community will improve the level of care significantly and provide essential, self-care decontamination to casualties. The self-care decontamination protocols described in this report provide a relatively inexpensive mitigation option when compared to the significant costs that would be incurred by a community if one, or several, of its primary health care facilities were forced to shut down because they were contaminated by casualties arriving directly from the incident scene without first being decontaminated. This report clearly demonstrates that the response gap that exists in a HazMat/CBRN MCI can be closed significantly by the introduction of self-care decontamination protocols into a first response.

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