University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center
| By Cathleen Rineer-Garber |
By the time Hurricane Katrina made landfall on Aug. 29, 2005, the New Mexico Disaster Medical Assistance Team was already in Houston, Texas, awaiting orders to proceed to the heart of the disaster. When those orders were given, the 35-member team moved to New Orleans and setup near the Superdome, where they provided care to approximately 600 people in two days.
“Many of the people we cared for during the first two days were evacuated from skilled nursing facilities and hospitals,” says Michael Richards, MD, Medical Officer for the NMDMAT and Director of the UNM Center for Disaster Medicine. According to Richards, the team always deploys with enough materials and supplies to operate for 72 hours before replenishing. But, with the volume of patients in the aftermath of Katrina, their supplies were depleted within 48 hours.
Relieved by another DMAT, the team restocked its supplies and was repositioned to Baton Rouge, where they worked with several other DMAT teams, the Louisiana Department of Health and other agencies to establish a 175-bed field hospital in a sports arena at Louisiana State University. A second hospital, with an additional 400 beds, was set up nearby.
“We provided a significant amount of direct patient care and also played a lead role in the coordination and management of the field hospital,” says Mark Shah, MD, Medical Director for NMDMAT and a faculty member in the UNM Department of Emergency Medicine. Providing leadership for an operation of this magnitude is no small feat. The field hospital at LSU was perhaps the largest field hospital ever established, says Richards.
Due to the extensive experience and deployment history of the NMDMAT, the team was a logical choice to assume a leadership role. It has been responding to medical disasters since it was established in 1984, as one of the first teams in the National Disaster Medical System and the first DMAT in the western US.
There are 51 teams across the country, but only 10 are classified as Level I teams. This means that only the New Mexico team—and nine others—are completely self-contained when they deploy, says Richards. “We have a full supply of equipment and a full roster of 35 people when we deploy.” The team brings its own tents, communication equipment, generators, water, food, and medical supplies. Usually team members arrive at a disaster via commercial airliner, while the supplies are brought in three large trucks.
The NMDMAT is actually composed of about 160 people from around the state, but usually only 35 members are called upon for any given disaster response. Members include physicians , nurses, pharmacists, emergency medical technicians, as well as administrative, security, safety , logistics and communications personnel.
Team members come from communities across the state, which is important because it allows the team to activate members without putting excessive demands on any particular community or hospital. “This is really New Mexico’s team,” says Richards. It’s a partnership between all of the state’s health care professionals and facilities, the business community and the community at large.
Since its inception, the team has responded to hurricanes, fires (including the Cerro Grande Fire in Los Alamos), tropical storms, floods, earthquakes and terrorist attacks. In September 2001, the team sent personnel to both the Pentagon and World Trade Center sites. With 23 deployments to date, the NMDMAT has proven to be a vital resource to the state and nation.
Missed a feature story? Click here to browse our features archive.