Columbine Shooting Research Paper

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Pages: 12

The Mass Casualty Response to the Columbine Shooting

Christian McConnell Dallas Brookhaven EMS College EMSP 1391 Responding to Mass Casualty David Dunafan 05/31/2024.

What is a Mass Casualty Incident? A Mass Casualty Incident is any event that creates a surge of more patients than an EMS system can handle at one time. Mass Casualty Incidents can happen because of natural disasters or the actions of a person or group of people, so long as it creates a sudden need for EMS that overwhelms the EMS system. One example of a Mass Casualty Incident is the infamous Columbine High School Shooting in April 1999. On April 20, 1999, two students who attended Columbine High School entered the school armed with two 12-gauge shotguns, a 9mm handgun, and
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This next part of the EMS response in a Mass Casualty Event involves triaging patients based on their priority of care. This part of the process includes the “C-ABC” portion of training. The term triage is a French word that means to sort. In this, EMS responders sort the known patients into different categories of priority for those who need the most immediate care and intervention. There are several slightly different strategies for triage and how patients are assessed. The first strategy is called START. This stands for Simple Triage and Rapid Transport. Currently, the START triage system is the most widely used in the United States for Mass Casualties. This system prioritizes patients first by their ability to remove themselves from the scene. If patients can walk themselves off the scene of the event and into the assigned collection point, they are marked as Green, or Walking wounded, which represents only minor injuries. The next category a patient might be placed in is Yellow, or Delayed, which would represent a serious injury to the patient, but it is not an immediate life threat. The next category a patient might be tagged with is Red or Immediate. This category is reserved