Tuesday, December 14, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Hospital sets up decontamination unit

MEDecon 3L trailer at Sunrise ready for operations

Richard Mumford stands Monday outside a new decontamination trailer at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center. Photo by John Gurzinski.

Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center officials showed off new shower facilities Monday that they hope no one will ever have to use.

The showers, dedicated largely for use by the elderly, disabled, and children and their caregivers, are the centerpiece of the MEDecon 3L, a fully self-contained, three-lane decontamination trailer.

Designed to wash away the effects of the work of terrorists engaging in chemical, biological or nuclear warfare, the showers are just one more part of Sunrise's evolving emergency preparedness plan in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"You have to be ready in today's world," hospital spokeswoman Amy Stevens said.

Sunrise already had installed decontamination showers in a parking garage in 2003 that can take care of up to 500 people who are fully ambulatory. In an emergency situation, a sprinkler-kind of system can be activated and tarps come down to give patients compartmentalized privacy.

The trailer can be used by people in industrial chemical or nuclear accidents.

Christopher Lake of the Nevada Hospital Association said the catalyst for decontamination units sprouting across the United States was the anthrax scare that gripped the country after the terrorist attacks.

In 2001, anthrax-laced letters killed five people and sickened 17 others.

Sunrise is the first U.S. hospital not connected with the Veterans Administration to receive such a decontamination trailer. The $40,000 cost of the mobile unit is covered by a federal grant for homeland security.

Seven other hospitals in the Las Vegas Valley will receive units in the coming months, according to Lake.

The decontamination units work like this:

Three people can enter the trailer at once. They are met by emergency responders who look like someone wearing a spacesuit. The responders give the patient a package that contains bags for clothing and valuables as well a poncho-gown and footies to wear.

The decontamination process is an assembly line operation, where patients disrobe, step into the shower area, and then put on clean clothes. Because each section is compartmentalized, up to nine people (or more if people are with small children) can e going through the trailer at once.

As many as 75 people could go through in an hour, depending on how mobile they are, according to Robert Denser, who works for Global Protection, distributor of decontamination products.

The shower consists of a special soap and water rinse.

The unit will sit outside the emergency department of Sunrise.

"It is critical that patients be decontaminated before they enter the hospital," said Lake. "If they are contaminated, then they can infect the hospital workers and other patients and cannot do the good they are trying to do."

Lake said that in 1995 a nerve gas attack on a Tokyo subway had ramifications on the hospital where all the victims were taken. Because they were not decontaminated prior to entering the hospital, he said that the nerve agent had an effect on hospital workers.

"We want to make sure with decontamination units that people who need help aren't hurting those who are trying to help them," Lake said.