The Tornado; Or, Tornado Marketing Technique

Recently at our own high school, students have been going through drills for lock down, and other emergencies. The practice, practice, and more practice really pays off when the time comes.

As a young man, I worked in a meto hospital and one of the key drills was the "Orange Alert"----the drill for a disaster. Every department and every employee knew what to do. Each department head had a "Call list," so that if one was not at the hospital, one could call in the needed staff to respond. That list had to be in your billfold at all times. I supervised Admitting and had my list, but never expected to use it.

The essence of the "Orange Alert" is that all the normal admitting operations---admiting paperwork---- ends and patients are given simple numbers, and a triage nurse or Mash unit determines what is most critical and treats the most critical first. That afternoon the disaster happened at 3:35pm or shift change when a tornado smashed a trailer park 6 miles away and 20 casualties were on the way in ambulances.
After the tornado had struck, a broken gas line had exploded and there were burn injuries coming.

Maybe you have watched the old "MASH" tv series. The humor of the folks in emergency care is depicted quite well. When the real event strikes however, the smoothness and skill of doctors and nurses in trauma care was the really stunning thing for me to see. They quickly knew what were the critical cases and what was not. After it was all over, we had the "review" where we went over it in slow motion to see where it could have been done better.

The two big things I took from all this was that: 1) One can and MUST determine the order of importance if one is forced to, and 2) The Importance of the call list.

So---it is time to implement the call list. You have friends that share your concerns whether it be for the school board election or the city offices. I am running for the school board because I believe this is an important moment for Evansville Schools. I also believe that by listening to the community, we CAN determine the order of importance and act accordingly.