This Week in EMS: A Recap for October 27- November 2, 2007

In a nationally reported tragedy this week seven college students were killed in a North Carolina beach house fire.

The fire broke out early Sunday morning after a fraternity and sorority gathering at the vacation house. The victims were from South Carolina schools; six attended the University of South Carolina (USC) and one was a Clemson University student.

The fatal fire appears to fit a national pattern; according to a study published by USA TODAY, off-campus parties have preceded many of the fires that have killed U.S. college students since 2000.

"This is the same scenario we are seeing time and again," says Ed Comeau, ex-chief fire investigator for the National Fire Protection Association and publisher of the online newsletter Campus Firewatch. "It drives home the importance of fire safety no matter where you are."

For more information visit the following articles:

• 7 Killed, 6 Injured in North Carolina Beach House Fire
• Students at N.C. Beach House Died of Smoke Inhalation, Carbon Monoxide
• N.C. Beach House Inferno Highlights Well-Known Risks

An unattended ambulance rolled down a hill and into the side of a Concord, New Hampshire home early Thursday morning.

Police reported that the Care Plus ambulance was visiting a nursing home to pick up a patient. When the driver went inside the building, the vehicle started rolling. It traveled across a lawn, down a hill, knocked down part of a wall and sent a tree into a car that was heading west on Pleasant Street.

No one was seriously injured in the crash, but police said if it had happened a half hour later, the area would have been packed with students on their way to high school and employees of a nearby hospital.

For the full article visit Ambulance Rolls into New Hampshire House.

According to a study released this week, the nation's public health system is not prepared to handle the mass casualties that could result from an act of terrorism.

PricewaterhouseCoopers' Health Research Institute, a New York think tank that provides advice to doctors and hospitals, reports that funds are insufficient to develop an effective response to a disaster.

"We tend to think of such large-scale disasters as one-off events, yet a major disaster has occurred every week on average in the U.S. for the past 10 years," said Carter Pate, global and U.S. managing partner of health industries and government services at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

"The American public is relying on a fragmented medical system to miraculously mount a swift, well-orchestrated response. Until further planning takes place, we should not be surprised if the system fails next time."

Read more on this report at Health System Found Unready for Terror.

Another study in the news this week examines assumptions about disaster response using a computer simulation model of trauma system response to mass casualty incidents involving dozens or hundreds of injured victims.

The study finds that the best response depends more on the capability of regional hospitals to treat critically injured victims than on the ability to accurately identify those victims in the field.

"No triage system is 100-percent accurate, so the key issue to define from an outcomes perspective is, 'How good is good-enough?'" says lead researcher Dr. Nathaniel Hupert, assistant professor of public health and medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College and assistant attending physician at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center.

"Our study suggests that pre-disaster planning can begin to address this question systematically, using modeling that takes into account local resources and response times, as well as specific types of mass casualty events."