Eastern Plumas Health Care has scheduled live emergency evacuation drills at its skilled nursing facilities in Portola and Loyalton from 2:00 \u2013 3:00 pm April 9.
\nThe California Department of Health requires EPHC to have at least two disaster drills each year \u2013 one live and one tabletop exercise. Given the severity of the brutal storm that ripped through northern California last February, officials opted to go live twice in 2015.
\nEPHC\u2019s Regina Martinez said this is the first time the hospital has taken the lead on organizing such an event by itself.
\n\u201cWe\u2019ve always participated in the county\u2019s drills in the past,\u201d said Martinez, EPHC\u2019s disaster drill co-coordinator. \u201cThis is the first time we\u2019ve had one on our own and we\u2019ve invited our partners to participate.\u201d
\nThe guest list includes Plumas County Office of Emergency Services, city officials, the Portola Fire Department and the Sheriff\u2019s Office. Representatives from the various agencies recently met to outline areas to be examined during the upcoming drill, including moving ambulatory and non-ambulatory evacuees, proper functioning of ramps, patient identification, emergency communications and post-disaster care.
\nSpecific procedures and details within each of those categories will be scrutinized as well.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s good to know what each partner can expect from the other entities,\u201d said Tom Hayes, EPHC chief executive officer. \u201cWe need to be prepared and start thinking about how we can improve on the things we learned from the last storm.\u201d
\nAssistant Sheriff Gerry Hendrick agreed, adding that the community\u2019s remote location requires emergency crews to be on high alert and highly efficient.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re isolated and we need to be more self-sufficient in this rural area,\u201d he explained. \u201cWe need to do better with other alternatives.\u201d
\nEPHC is also working with Portola\u2019s Public Works Department and Liberty Utilities to open a warming station in the hospital\u2019s Education Center if and when disaster strikes. The center is intended to serve individuals without heat and provide a power source for medical needs such as mechanical oxygen regulators.
\nAnn Powers
\nPortola Reporter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Eastern Plumas Health Care has scheduled live emergency evacuation drills at its skilled nursing facilities in Portola and Loyalton from 2:00 \u2013 3:00 pm April 9. The California Department of Health requires EPHC to have at least two disaster drills each year \u2013 one live and one tabletop exercise. Given the severity of the brutal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ephc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ephc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ephc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ephc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ephc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ephc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ephc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ephc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ephc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}