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In Standard or Basic First Aid courses, every instruction is followed with the advice to "Call 911 or go to the Emergency Room." Those choices will be impossible in the first few minutes and hours of a massive emergency, the time when the most lives are either saved or lost. Standard First Aid does not mention the possibility of more than one person being injured at the same time. It has no Disaster Triage to identify the most life-threatened first, and Standard first-aiders may be unaware of more serious and life-threatening conditions while they focus on the less important but more visible things like cuts and fractures. In Disaster First Aid, S.T.A.R.T. Rapid Triage identifies the most serious and at-risk quickly, so they can be helped first. When 911 Can't Come Since the Loma Prieta Earthquake of 1989. all city, county, and state Offices Of Emergency Services have advised us to be prepared to manage on our own for at least the first 24 hours to 3 days. What are you going to do when 911 can't come? In a major disaster like the 8.0 earthquake expected in California (and there are active earthquake faults all over the world) there may be destruction spread over many cities and ways of transportation. Hospitals will be overrun, and many of them may be shut down because of their own damage. The 911 phone number will be a busy signal. Phone lines will be jammed, and needed for emergency workers. Disaster First Aid tells you how to get direct contact with the Disaster Response network in your area. Common But Deadly Things That Happen In Disasters A number of different circumstances can cause temporary airway obstruction or compromise, so that the person cannot breathe. Without oxygen the heart stops pumping blood within 90 to 120 seconds. In 10 to 12 minutes, irreversible brain damage begins. People often die from situations like this even when their other injuries were not serious enough to cause death. It only takes 2 seconds to open the airway and possibly save that life, and anyone can do it. And yet, neither the recognition of this danger nor the urgency of treatment is included in Standard First Aid. In Disaster First Aid it's the first thing you check, in the first seconds you see the injured person. Other common causes of unnecessary death in multi-casualty emergencies are (A) blood loss and (B) the silent killer, shock, which can occur even with otherwise non-lethal injuries. Disaster First Aid teaches every person how to quickly identify the most at-risk injured, how to control visible bleeding immediately in the first seconds, and how to recognize the potential for internal bleeding and shock, take the first steps to treat it immediately, and prioritize help where it's critically needed. These are simple things anyone can learn in an afternoon. These are KEY elements of Disaster First Aid and Rapid Triage. They are not contained in Standard First Aid. How Can You Know What You Should Do? With Standard First Aid, the first-aider must figure out for himself what is happening with the injured person (diagnose) in order to know what action to take. Disaster First Aid eliminates the need for medical judgments being made by non-medical people. It removes the confusion and fear of error by using the S.T.A.R.T. Triage system the same system used by Firefighters and Paramedics in the state of California and most of the United States. The first few minutes are the most critical time. Even when 911 can't come, you are already there. The simple formula of S.T.A.R.T. Rapid Triage allows you to take action quickly and correctly. This system, proven effective and reliable by 20 years of practice and statistics, makes the decisions for you. By following a few simple rules, anyone can take the right action quickly without confusion, indecision, or fear of doing the wrong thing. Standard First Aid Is Not Much Help In A Disaster Standard First Aid can be useful in non-disaster situations; it has advice about jellyfish stings, snake bites, and childbirth. Disaster First Aid has none of those, because those things are not what you need in a real disaster. Most Standard First Aid courses are a "tossed salad" of information. Disaster First Aid is very focused and to-the-point, organized by: What To Do First, What To Do Next, and How To Do It, in the simplest terms. It teaches (and lists in the handbook) the practical, functional sequence of actions that have been statistically proven to save the most lives and do the most good for the most people. It's Time For a New Kind of First Aid Standard First Aid was first introduced by the American Red Cross in the early 1940's and has not changed much since then. In 1976 it became "Modular" and in the early 1990's a little bit of disaster "spin" was added. But there was really not anything new, and nothing specific for or helpful with, a true disaster. The world has changed profoundly, and Standard First Aid has not. For truly large-scale emergencies, Standard First Aid has too much of what you don't need, and not enough of what you do need, to take care of yourself and others in the event of an unimaginable disaster like the terrible earthquakes and natural disasters happening all over the world, or the horrors of a terrorist attack. Learning Disaster First Aid and Rapid Triage doesn't take much time - one day, about six hours, to prepare yourself and your neighbors or co-workers to be able to save the saveable lives.You would want someone to do this for you. And you would want someone at your children's school to do it for them. | ||
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