Specialized California Disaster Team Undertakes First Task

Oct. 28--A unique team of Bay Area disaster specialists led by a San Carlos man was dispatched on its inaugural mission last week to San Diego County, where they provided medical support to people displaced from their homes by the firestorms that ravaged the region.

The 43-member California Medical Assistance Team raced to Southern California on Tuesday with a police escort to assist local agencies in meeting the medical needs of thousands of residents forced into temporary shelters.

It was the first deployment for Cal-MAT, which was established this year at the direction of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when residents of New Orleans waited several days for help to arrive from the federal government.

Beginning Wednesday,

TEAMINews 11Cal-MAT doctors treated patients, sent out "strike teams" to perform assessments of medical needs at local shelters and helped the American Red Cross set up a medical clinic at the Del Mar Fairgrounds, the horseracing venue that served as one of San Diego County's major evacuation centers.

In each instance, Cal-MAT's role was to augment local services.

"We go down to the locals and say, 'We're yours, where do you want us to go?'" said Sam Bradley, disaster response manager for the state Emergency Medical Services Authority, which oversees Cal-MAT. "We do whatever they want us to do."

Cal-MAT gives the state the ability to send doctors, nurses and emergency medical technicians within

hours to help overwhelmed local authorities manage disasters such as earthquakes and fires.

Getting the call

The teams are equipped to operate for 72 hours, if necessary, without any outside support, bringing their own power, shelter, sanitation, water and medical supplies.

In the event of a disaster that results in mass casualties or renders hospitals unusable, such as the Northridge earthquake in 1994, Cal-MAT crews are now capable of setting up and running a fully functional field hospital with 200 to 300 beds.

Cal-MAT's first mission began early Tuesday morning, when automated calls went out to the program's Northern California roster, which draws from the Sacramento and San Francisco areas.

In a matter of hours, team members were assembled at a staging area in Menlo Park. By Tuesday night, Cal-MAT was setting up its headquarters in a conference room at the Del Mar Fairgrounds under the command of Dave Lipin, 41, a trained medic and former executive at a software company, who lives with his wife in San Carlos.

On Wednesday, four-member strike teams were sent to three smaller shelters to see if they were capable of handling evacuees' medical needs, from filling prescriptions to treating respiratory problems stemming from smoke inhalation.

Two shelters, one at a high school and the other at a casino, were doing just fine, with "not a patient to be found," Lipin noted later. But at the third, in a community center in the city of Poway, Red Cross volunteers and city employees were not prepared to handle any medical crises.

Almost as soon as the team arrived, an 88-year-old man with a history of heart problems collapsed in the heat. Three team members -- a doctor and two nurses -- diagnosed him, made him comfortable and called an ambulance, which whisked him to a hospital.

The team ended up spending the night at the Poway Community Center, which held about 125 evacuees. They set up a counter for performing triage, established a private room for treating patients and helped make sure the center had the necessary prescription medications.

Fewer patients a good thing

At Del Mar, Cal-MAT doctors reorganized the shelter's medical clinic, which had been set up behind the intake counter for evacuees, to give patients some privacy. The clinic saw about 30 patients Wednesday and Thursday, according to Dr. Kent Garman, one of three Cal-MAT doctors stationed at Del Mar.