Simulated lightning strike sends dozens to hospital during mock exercise

Fanshawe College held a mock mass casualty emergency training exercise for students. CTV London’s Sean Irvine reports.

Multiple simulated emergencies played out on the grounds of Fanshawe College today.

The annual event expanded to include disaster scenes occurring within minutes of each other during a severe weather event.

Intially. an SUV flipped over near the Cheapside St. entrance to the college.

Soon afterwards, a mass casualty was heard over the radio.

Emergency responders, already stretched by the earlier calls, arrived to find dozens of people injured by lightning.

It was a chaotic scene as paramedics and police evaluated who needed immediate care and who could wait.

“As with any emergency, we rely on the trained professionals to do their job based on their training and their experience. So, when they show up on the scene, they have to look at what the worst-case scenario is and start treating that and then scale it back according to priorities”, said Brent Arseneault, an emergency management coordinator at Fanshawe College.

But any emergency, real or simulated, can alter quickly.

On Thursday morning, the bad situation worsened, as more people were found nearby injured by flying debris.

“A tornado came or something, and we went to the woods to get shelter from the rain”, explained a student actor portraying an injured man. “The woods started cracking and all the trees started falling down.”

To further add to the chaos, an uninjured beekeeper near the scene of the lightning strike would not cooperate with the first responders.

Suddenly, they had an additional problem on their hands.

“We had a student [paramedic] who got stung by a bee, and he went into full anaphylaxis”, shared Arsenault.

The overwhelming situation was managed at the scene as the injured were transported to a simulated trauma centre.

It was set up inside Fanshawe’s nursing school.

There, medical teams, including students, LHSC nursing staff, and real-life trauma doctors, took over.

“This is exactly what it would look like if we had 80 patients descend on one of our hospitals in London”, said trauma surgeon Dr. Kelly Vogt.

As she commented, her staff ran out of beds as more injured arrived.

“We’ve seen patients who are impaled with flying objects. We’ve seen patients with brain injuries and so many walking wounded.”

The lessons learned here will be applied when a real-life scenario occurs.

“This is a great scenario for us. Because if this were to happen in the real world, we have the practice here, so that when something does happen in real life, we are ready”, said medical resident Kylie Swary.

“These opportunities to practice give us a chance to drill this, and to practice here, when real lives are not on the line,” proclaimed Vogt.