S.F. earthquake drill -- "We got a heavy bleeder"

Oct. 07--The earthquake victim suffered from arterial bleeding in one of his thighs, and required two tourniquets and a chest needle decompression.

"My leg!" he screamed, writhing and crying out on the airfield of Coast Guard Air Station San Francisco on Monday morning.

"We got a heavy bleeder," said Lt. Commander Brian Dimmer, an emergency doctor with the U.S. Navy medical corps. "Hey buddy, what happened?"

The half-dozen U.S. Navy corpsmen were calm -- this was, after all, a drill -- as they treated the man, checking him for penetrating injuries on his back as he wailed in pain.

It wasn't the most serious medical scenario ever faced by the corpsmen treating him, but it was certainly unusual in a city like San Francisco, as was the military response of a doctor and nurse on an MV-22 Osprey that flew from Moffett Field in Mountain View to aid the faux victim at Coast Guard Air Station near the San Francisco airport.

The drill imagined a 7.8-magnitude earthquake along the San Andreas Fault, with the military being called on for assistance. The idea was to practice for a time when San Francisco authorities need to call on their partners in the armed forces.

San Francisco's Fleet Week -- more known for the aerobatics performed by the Blue Angels -- is the only one in the country that runs humanitarian assistance and disaster response training as part of the events, said Francis Zamora, a city Department of Emergency Management spokesman.

"We've been doing this since 2010 and it's grown each year," he said. "It's really an opportunity for the city to get prepared because in the event of a catastrophe, we need to know who the key personnel are and practice making decisions together."

Monday's drill was led by Lt. Commander Brian Dimmer. Though he is a U.S. Navy emergency doctor, he works with the Marines Corps, which doesn't have aircraft dedicated to medical care.

Because of that, medical teams in the Marines must be able to act as first responders and mobile intensive care units.

They must be able to turn an Osprey -- a tilt-rotor with the ability to land anywhere like a helicopter, but fly like an airplane -- into a mobile emergency room where medics can stem bleeding, provide blood transfusions and resuscitate the injured until they can reach a shock trauma platoon.

According to Dimmer, though the earthquake victim -- a Navy sailor from San Diego with great acting chops -- was treated outside on Monday, crews would move faster in an actual event, grabbing an injured person and treating him on the aircraft en route to a surgeon.

In the second half of the crisis response drill, a shock trauma platoon was set up in a parking lot at San Francisco General Hospital.

In a serious disaster, the military will set up a "forward resuscitation surgical system" to beef up the triage capabilities of hospitals overrun with patients, said U.S. Navy Lt. Commander Drew Stegall. Medical teams will do initial assessments of patients coming in.

"The first time we do this, we don't want it to be during an actual event," Stegall said. "Every time we do this, it not only improves our relationship with the civilian teams, but by doing this as often as possible, we are maintaining that resilient training."

Vivian Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: vho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @VivianHo

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