Disaster Drill solutions

There are no right or wrong answers to this really, as long as you keep these goals in mind: do everything you can to save the victims without putting your team in unnecessary danger.

Now, that said, there are a few things to keep in mind while analyzing the situation:

1. You have a very limited amount of time because:

• the building is very unstable due to the earthquake
• earthquakes are usually followed by aftershocks
• there is the possibility of a fire or explosion due to a gas leak

2. You know that there are 2 victims
3. You are carrying a stretcher and a radio
4. There are 2 search and rescue teams

When you found the first victim, you discovered that, even though seriously injured, she was stable, meaning she wasn't going to get any worse. That meant it was reasonably safe to call the fireman in charge (aka FIC), notify him of the victim's location, and continue your search for the second victim. If a backup team was available, the FIC could've send it directly to the 1st victim's location.

In this scenario, the only other team available was the team searching the ground floor, so a decision needed to be made: should the FIC pull the second team off of its search and send it to the known location of a victim?

The FIC could decide on the basis of the names of the missing. Knowing the names of the missing gives the FIC a good idea of where to look for them, for that information would let him figure out where they normally would have been at the time of the earthquake. If the second victim would normally be on the second floor, the FIC would send the ground floor search team to rescue the first victim and tell the your team to continue its search. For the purposes of this discussion, let's say that that is what happened.

Your discovery of the second victim just as part of the building collapsed made things much more complicated. Your decision here would be based on your background and training.

If you are just someone who works in the building and who volunteered for the search and rescue team, you would follow the FIC's instructions and get out of the building asap. You've already saved one victim, so you've done a good job and don't want to put anyone else in danger, like your team, or anyone who might have to come and rescue you.

On the other hand, if you were a member of a highly trained search and rescue team like those that work for the fire or sherriff's departments, you've been trained to determine how much danger you are in. If you decide that your end of the building is stable enough, you may try to continue your rescue effort. You might even call the other team and tell them to come back in and help you after they've safely removed the first victim from the building. As a person who was specially trained for this job, you'd be willing to put yourself at greater risk in order to save another person's life, especially if that person were a child.