There are only two United Nations-certified disaster search and rescue teams in the Western Hemisphere and physicians from GW Hospital serve on one of them. They’re on your side in every kind of emergency.
“We can face different hazards in Washington, DC, due to our location,” says Bruno Petinaux, MD, Co-chair of the Emergency Management Committee at GW Hospital. “On the Fourth of July, we had 400,000 people less than two miles from the hospital. We had to be able to respond to anything.”
Dr. Petinaux and Co-chair Anthony Macintyre, MD, are experienced in organizing emergency resources and providing care during large- scale disasters. As members of USA-1, the Fairfax County Urban Search and Rescue team, they both traveled to Kathmandu, Nepal, after the earthquake on April 25, 2015. They also served during the Haiti earthquake in 2010.
“After an earthquake or bombing, our patients are not on a gurney, they are in con ned or collapsed spaces. Our rst challenge is access, followed by planning for and providing care, securing the structure and removing the person safely,” says Dr. Petinaux.
Drs. Petinaux and Macintyre were on a plane to Nepal 50 hours after the nagnitude 7.8 earthquake hit last April. Their team of 56 included paramedics, engineers and six search and rescue dogs. They began their nearly three-week mission by searching buildings to make sure no one was left inside. They cleared rubble at sites like schools and hospitals in case people were trapped. In additionm to rescuing survivors, the team’s engineers checked buildings to declare them safe.
In Washington, DC, Dr. Petinaux and his staff make sure emergency processes are in place at the hospital. They take care of about 80,000 ER patients each year, and many more in the event of a large- scale emergency. “We hope we never have to face a major disaster,” says Dr. Petinaux. “It helps to know that the George Washington University Hospital takes emergency management seriously.”