Global & Disaster Medicine

Archive for the ‘Mass fatalities’ Category

Las Vegas’ trie first responders: Volunteers combed the grounds for survivors and carried out the injured. Strangers used belts as makeshift tourniquets to stanch bleeding, and then others sped the wounded to hospitals in the back seats of cars and the beds of pickup trucks.

NY Times

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pETJDaInZ2w


Las Vegas: Dodging bullets, first responders respond to a crisis

NY Times

“……At the medical tent, people lay everywhere. He saw his medical technicians applying pressure to chest and leg wounds, using tourniquets to try to stop the bleeding.

“I saw my personnel checking for pulses, realizing the person did not have a pulse, and we literally had to push the body out of the tent and make room for another patient,” he said.

People Mr. Simpson assumed were family members or friends begged the medical workers to perform CPR. But they were following principles of disaster triage, which, in the most extreme circumstances, call for bypassing those whose hearts have already stopped. So in some cases, family members began CPR themselves…..”


Las Vegas: At least 58 people were killed and more than 500 wounded; suspect dead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7YDZZ9ei64

CNN


While flooding is a natural disaster, the scale of the human tragedy in Freetown is very much man-made.

Amnesty International

‘…..“The authorities should have learned lessons from previous similar incidents and put in place systems to prevent, or at least minimise, the consequences of these disasters. Devastating floods are now an annual occurrence in the country’s capital. Yet, due to a lack of regulation and insufficient consideration for minimum standards and environmental laws, millions of Sierra Leoneans are living in dangerously vulnerable homes.”
The right to adequate housing under international law requires that every home be ‘habitable’, which includes providing protections against disasters such as this. However, poor regulation and failures to ensure environmental factors are part of urban planning in Sierra Leone often result in structures being built that are both unsafe and situated in dangerous locations…..’

 


With some 400 bodies recovered from the mudslides and flood that devastated Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, the dead are being buried in mass graves.

NY Times

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI93gmMry0E

 


Nine dead & nearly 20 others were taken from the rig hospitalized in dire condition, many with extreme dehydration and heatstroke

CBS

  • Thirty were hospitalized in all
  • 17 of those rescued were being treated for injuries that were considered life-threatening


7/20/2012: A 24-year-old gunman goes on a rampage at a movie theater in the Denver suburb of Aurora, killing 12 people—the youngest a 6-year-old girl—and injuring at least 70 others.

History Channel


A stampede of religious pilgrims in a pedestrian tunnel in Mecca leaves more than 1,400 people dead: 7/2/1990.

History Channel


History of UVIS (The Unified Victim Identification System)

UVIS-NYC

2001: Software is developed in response to Sept 11th and Flight 587 disasters, out of which UVIS evolves.

2004: The first version of UVIS is developed in anticipation of the NYC Republican National Convention in 2004. This version has only the Call Center and Missing Person’s modules.

2005: The Family Assistance Center Module is added to UVIS. OCME and NYPD gain full Ante Mortem–Missing Persons interview capabilities.

2007: Documentation of the full cycle of victim identification is completed with the addition of the Post Mortem module. OCME now has the ability to track victims from “Cradle to Grave”. A forensic dental identification program was developed with new charting code and a smart search engine.

2008: In preparing for a possible Pandemic Influenza (PI) outbreak in the NYC area, the PI module is developed based upon the OCME’s “PI Surge Plan to Manage Decedents”. All 63 heath care facilities are connected to UVIS.

2009: UVIS continues to be developed and expanded in close collaboration with various Medical Examiners’ and Coroners’ Offices throughout the country. OCME and other Medical Examiners/Coroners offices provide important feedback for the future development of UVIS. UVIS is currently undergoing a major enhancement that will create a medicolegal case management system that will be fully integrated with all disaster components, laboratory systems and external information sources.


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