California hospital practices emergency response with community organizations and quick EOC shelter

| 08.22.2007 | 07:21:537298 |

August 22 '07: A planned emergency response exercise in Salinas, California will partner the Monterey Sheriff's Office, the Salinas Police Explorer Volunteers and the Girl Scouts of Monterey Bay at the Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital and it will simulate a bio-emergency response using the Portable Isolation Containment System.

The structure, made by Design Shelter, was created to be set up very quickly - in under 30 minutes - with no tools. It can be used as a semi-permanant shelter as well as a temporary emergency operations center.

Officials in California told the Californian.com that they would be recirculating the "air purification for both positive and negative pressure deployments [and that] the tent [could] also be used in cases of widespread infectious diseases or incidents of bio-terrorism."

According to Design Shelter's website, the PICS can be used also as a patient or victim treatment center "with multiple medical unit modular expansion options to create field medical hospitals."

Other uses for PICS include base station operations for mountain climbers, eco-tourism, and desert (both hot and frozen) expedition base camps.