Disaster drill staged at Gritman

One of Thursday’s disaster drill "victims" at Gritman Medical Center

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Story Published: Nov 12, 2009 at 10:22 PM PST

Story Updated: Nov 12, 2009 at 10:22 PM PST

By Matt Loveless

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MOSCOW - Gritman Medical staff were in make-up Thursday morning, readying for what would at least look and sound like a real disaster at the hospital. It was all part of a drill.

Kane Francetich said they have a coordinated drill about once a year, but not usually on as big of a scale. That and the element of surprise can keep staff guessing, even if the disaster is staged.

"The situation today is not exactly clear, because that's part of what we want to achieve, is we want to have that uncertainty and unknown," said Gritman Chief Information Officer Kane Francetich. "But we know that there's going to be a shooter in the building, in Gritman Medical Center taking a hostage, so we know that will evolve as the day goes by."

Eleven agencies were involved in the cooperative effort, including Moscow Police, the Latah County Sheriff's Office, and the University of Idaho.

"All of the organizations involved are used to dealing with emergency situations, but they're not used to dealing with them in a coordinated fashion," said Francetich.

Gritman spokesperson Connie Osborn said the drill tests, among other things, the hospital's ability to respond to multiple casualties.

Francetich said the way to do that is to make the drill as real as possible.

"It's going to look real, and it's going to sound real, and for all practical purposes we're going to treat it as much like a real situation as we can, so that we can learn from it," said Francetich. "We don't expect everything to go perfectly. We expect to be able to learn from the situation so that we can get better if something like that were to happen."

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