Decontamination tent demonstrated at SMH
By Jim Smedley
Staff Writer

NORWAY – Mike Grant said not many people paid attention to Maine’s idea of equipping hospitals and emergency teams with portable decontamination equipment in 1999.

Then terrorists attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.

“Maine is well ahead of other states in the nation in having D-con equipment and training to use it,” said Grant, training coordinator for the Maine Emergency Management Agency in Augusta.

He and Mike Steinbuchel, the weapons of mass destruction program coordinator officer for agency, were in Norway showing Stephens Memorial Hospital workers and PACE Ambulance crews setup and operation of a portable decontamination tent.

Steinbuchel said currently 38 hospitals in Maine have the decontamination tent, but Stephens is only the 12th hospital to receive the training. There are also 18 decontamination strike teams having the unit, which can be taken to emergency scenes.

He said potential team members have to have a minimum level of training to be considered. Currently, strike teams are primarily composed of first responder agencies, such as firefighters, EMTs and police.

The only decontamination strike team in Oxford, Franklin and Androscoggin counties is in the Oxford Hills area. A strike team of first responders from Norway, Oxford and Paris was created about a year ago.

Steinbuchel said the next closest decontamination strike team is in Brunswick.

Grant said Maine created a Weapons of Mass Destruction Planning Committee in 1999 that realized a standardized plan was going to be needed for state coverage.

He said the committee comprises eight people with frontline experience who knew how the equipment had to be used.

The committee realized that hospitals should have the D-con equipment and that as rural as Maine is, mobile ones would be necessary.

He said it could be chaotic if the participating agencies were to order different equipment.

“We had to look at something we could set up in Maine that would work in the middle of winter,” Grant said. We wanted a standard tent. With tethers, this tent can stand in 60 to 70 mile per hour wind.”

The tent is made by TCI Corp. in Maryland.

It is 21 feet long, 9 feet wide and 9 feet high in the center.

Grant said setting up the tent in five minutes is the standard and under five minutes is the norm.

The tent is made of “rip-stop” nylon and divided by large sheets of the nylon into three sections.

Dan Schorr, Oxford County Emergency Management Agency director, said it was created that way so men and women could have privacy during the decontamination process. There is a space on either side of the tent to accommodate them.

The center aisle is used for those on stretchers.

Schorr explained that as an individual enters the tent, there is a closed space to disrobe and a zipper on the tent to hand out decontaminated clothes. The next step is to enter the wash area where overhead nozzles spray water and a hand-held spray is available. In the final section, the person would be handed clean clothes or a blanket, through another zipper.

There is a portable stand with rollers in the center area, Schorr explained. People would be taken off stretchers, put on a plastic board and rolled through the area.

The water line can be hooked up to a fire engine that can create enough pressure to run the three cleaning areas at once.

The water runs through a diesel-powered heater with 125,000 BTUs. A 90,000 BTU space heater also pumps hot air into the tent.

“It’s not the most comfortable shower people will ever have,” Steinbuchel said. “But they won’t die from hypothermia either.”

The contaminated water is collected in a catch basin and then pumped into a receptacle.

Steinbuchel said the tents cost roughly $25,000 and are paid for with money from a Department of Homeland Security grant.

jsmedley@sunjournal.com

Copy the Story Link