In partnership with Park and Madison Counties, Gallatin County applied for a homeland security grant to enhance the regions capability to respond to mass casualty incidents.  We received official notification that our project has been funded and we will receive around $300,000 to enhance our capabilities.  This project will begin in October 2018 and addresses four area.  Five mass casualty trailers will be procured and positioned around the regions major travel corridors.  The trailers will contains supplies to help stabilize and manage patients at the incident site until they can be transported to a hospital.  A mass casualty bus will be procured and configured to transport 12 non-ambulatory patients and a hand full of ambulatory at the same time.  We recognize that we have limited ambulance capability in the region and that transporting large numbers of injured people often becomes a bottleneck.  Along with this the grant will provide a standardized patient triage kit for responders around the region to update the various forms currently in use.  Finally, ballistic personal protective equipment will also be procured for medical personnel following the US Department of Justice’s Rescue Task Force concept.

Training and planning activities are already underway to support this project.  We expect to begin procuring equipment this coming winter with final training and exercise taking place in summer of 2019.

Emergency Management is currently in the process of updating the county’s incident cache trailer.  Originally the trailer was designed to support extended wildland fires and contained wildland specific tools.  We’ve discovered that with the current configurations of our local fire departments and the extensive interagency wildland fire system, this really isn’t needed anymore.  So with funding support from Yellowstone National Park and the Montana Community Foundation we are in the process of changing the trailer to support the incident command post functions of any incident.

Incident Cache Trailer

When we have an incident that will last a day, or several days, we often find ourselves running around procuring what we’ll need.  Regardless of where we are, quickly deploying support resources such as shelters, chairs, tables, power, feeding resources and similar items often are what make the difference.  So the updated trailer will contain these supplies ready to immediately deploy in support of an incident or planned event.

New supplies added to the cache trailer consist of:

• folding tables and chairs (for 75 people)
• portable tents (10′ x 20′)
• generators
• interior led lighting kits and portable led light stands
• extension cords, distribution kits and surge suppressors
• traffics cones, flagging and snow fencing
• signage kits
• tool kits
• staple guns, hammers, stakes, anchors, air compressor
• network and communications kit (cabling, router, switches, wireless bridge)