I know the Oregonian coverage of this drill was all roses, but from a "victim" perspective, this drill was a mess. Utter confusion on the scene, transporting, and at the hospital. Once I got into the actual emergency room, things went great; the staff were very much on top of it all, and doing the drill very realistically. But prior to that...yowza.
I'll spare you the details of being a seriously injured victim, laying in the rain for two hours without ever once being triaged, decontaminated or moved under cover and get right to the point: THIS is why citizens everywhere must get trained as a disaster responder. Cities offer free training for their citizens to be enable them to help themselves and handle their own personal neighborhood after a disaster.
The victim actors for this TOPOFF drill were asked to just be victims. But in a real-world situation, all of us who are trained disaster responders would have jumped into action helping and treating each other. The man who was playing an old woman in shock with her hand amputated by debris would have been dead by the time the rescue workers got around to "her" 2 hours later in this drill scenario. But in the real world, we would have helped "her"; that's an injury a trained disaster responder can handle.
So I highly encourage enrolling in the various disaster responder trainings.
In the City of Portland, it's called Neighborhood Emergency Team training
http://www.portlandonline.com/oem/index.cfm?c=dbggh . Very useful and helpful training. They've also created a citizens' web site: http://www.pdxprepared.net/
In City of Beaverton it's called Citizens Response Team Training. http://www.beavertonoregon.gov/departments/emergency/cert/cert_training.htmlIf you do a search of "(city's name) disaster training" you'll find your City's program. Most training is free. Some advanced training, like operating radio systems, have a small fee attached to them.
