Photo Gallery: Fire Department Mass Casualty Training

Evanston firefighters have spent the past three days simulating their response to a seven-victim car accident as part of the Evanston Fire Department’s ‘mass casualty training’.

The training, which took place at the recycling center at 2222 Oakton St., aimed to teach firefighters how to best respond to any incident where multiple people are injured.

Though a car crash simulation was used in the training exercise, Evanston Fire Department Division Chief Dwight Hohl said firefighters were taught techniques that could be used in natural disasters, train wrecks, stage collapses and other similar situations.

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The training reinforced some techniques, such as responding to a call, arriving on and securing the scene of an accident, communicating with hospitals and paramedics, triage and extraction.

The exercise also taught firefighters how to potentially collaborate and pool resources with other fire departments for accidents too large for the Evanston department to handle alone.

“We might need to get help from other departments to come in and help us take these patients, treat them and get them to the hospital,” Hohl said. “They have to get to the hospitals at the right time, get treated at the right time and all their injuries are accounted for.”

Each Evanston firefighter attended only one of the three training days, based on his or her department shift.

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