Disaster / Medical Services Team

This team is the newest of the Rescue Squad’s six specialty teams.  It specializes in providing prehospital medical care in cases where there are large numbers of patients, which overwhelm immediately available resources.  Incidents that the team is prepared to respond to include natural as well as man-made disasters such as: tornadoes, large fires, building collapses, hazardous materials incidents, mass transportation accidents, terrorist events, or any mass casualty incident.  The team is staffed with EMTs, Paramedics, Doctors, and Nurses.

In addition to brining many highly trained emergency medical care providers, this team also brings large quantities of medical equipment and its own support staff to help mitigate the incident.  The team’s capabilities include providing triage and treatment to large numbers of patients and will soon include the capability to deploy a sheltered, environmentally controlled, mobile alternate care facility to serve as a mass care clinic, advanced treatment area, or mass vaccination site.  The team’s medical equipment is selected and stored to be easy to use and rapidly deployable in order to quickly integrate with the local resources on the scene.  Specialized medical equipment is carried to provide a high level of care to victims of terrorism or industrial accidents involving chemical, biological, radiological,  or explosive agents.  

The team, which has been largely funded by Homeland Security and Metropolitan Medical Response System grants, responds throughout the 16 county East Tennessee region and beyond when requested. 

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