St. Charles County Fire Fighters, Paramedics Train For Earthquake

A 6.0 earthquake has hit St. Charles County. The old Kmart building off of Veteran's Memorial Parkway has partially collapsed, trapping people inside.

St. Central County Fire Fighters are the first to respond. Soon after, paramedics arrive. They head inside the building, and encounter injured patients walking around, bodies on the ground, smoke and chaos.

This scene will play out fifteen times over the course of three weeks in May as fire fighters and paramedics from across St. Charles County participate in joint training drill forcing them to work together to find patients, rescue them, perform triage and work in a disaster situation.

Although both paramedics and firefighters routinely train for large-scale emergencies, the two groups in St. Charles County rarely get the opportunity to train together, said Kim McKenna, training facilitator for St. Charles County Ambulance District.

This year, the groups have come together to conduct a joint training scenario. Some 300 medics and nearly 300 fire fighters from throughout St. Charles County will participate in the drill that forces them to work with people they haven't worked with before.

"It helps us do teamwork," said Mike Scott, of the Wentzville Fire Protection District. "We preach teamwork. In a situation where we're going to have an earthquakes it's not going to be localized to your city, you're going to have ambulances from all over."

The training is being held in a former Kmart building, owned by and located off of Veteran's Memorial Parkway. The site was the proposed location for community center, but that plan was shelved. ShowMe Aquatics and Fitness agreed to let the groups use the building.

"It's an extremely good facility for something like this," Scott said. "Especially with all the many hidden areas in here that you'd find in an old building."

The trainers hung black plastic sheeting to replicate shelving and aisles in the large empty space, trying to make the scenario as realistic as possible. In a real earthquake the large shelves at a grocery store or super center would likely be knocked over, possibly trapping people.

Volunteers played the roles of the wounded, complete with fake wounds.

Frank Seavert, a St. Peters resident who is training to be an Emergency Medical Technician, volunteered to play the role of a victim who was blind and mute. During the training on Thursday, he was "found" and then left three times before he was eventually rescued.

Capt. Scott Bumeter of the Cottleville Fire Department said this was the first time fire fighters had really trained with paramedics.

"They look at it from one perspective, we look at it from another," he said.

After the exercise is complete, everyone is given a chance to talk about what they learned, what went well, what could have done better.

"The whole point of this is for us to identify areas where we can train on more," said Dave Lewis, St. Charles Fire Department Battalion Chief and training officer.