Issues in Operational Response and Management

¶ … Operational Response and Management

The Tokyo subway Sarin gas attack in 1995 elicited a critical incident response based on immediate public safety. There were nearly 700 people taken to the hospital by ambulance, and five thousand more arrived at hospitals through other means (Ogawa, Yamamura, & Ando, et al., 2000). Most of those individuals were actually well but frightened, which made it difficult to distinguish who was truly sick. Still, 17 patients were found to be critical, with nearly 40 more deemed serious (Ogawa, Yamamura, & Ando, et al., 2000). Additionally, almost 1000 more were moderately or minimally ill, and were experiencing problems with their vision. Those who were mildly affected were released later in the day because they had sufficiently recovered from their vision problems by that time. Most other patients went home the next day, with a few remaining hospitalized for a week. Eight people died on the day of the attack, and the death toll eventually rose to one dozen (Ogawa, Yamamura, & Ando, et al., 2000). Emergency services were highly criticized by the way they handled the attack. The media was also criticized, mostly because they wanted to continue filming and reporting, rather than help to transport the sick and injured to hospitals where they could get needed care.

The Subway Authority also had problems, because they started receiving reports of injury but kept the other trains running anyway. It was true that Sarin gas was not well know at that time (Sidell, 1998), but it was also clear that many people were very sick and a large number of them were simply lying on the ground. Onlookers stated that the subway resembled a battlefield. Many of the injured had difficulty breathing, but no one was tending to them. There was too much chaos, and even the people who were trained to respond to incidents such as that one did not seem to know how to help the injured or what they should be doing. Those who needed help were not getting it, and the people who were supposed to be providing help were not giving it in a timely manner that could have prevented more injuries and saved more lives. Both short-term and long-term response was lacking (Sidell, 1998).

The most critical issues for any operational response in the short-term are to get help for those who are sick or injured and stop others from coming into the area (Sidell, 1998). If people are allowed to continue moving into and through the area, there will be more casualties and the potential spread of whatever caused the incident in the first place. Only first responders such as critical medical and police personnel should be allowed into an area where this type of incident has occurred (Sidell, 1998). The other trains should have been stopped immediately, and any reporters who were too busy reporting to help save lives should have been removed from the area. In the long-term, there were other considerations. How was the area cleaned? At what point would it be safe for others to return to that area, and how would that be determined? Additionally, how did the attack occur, and how can future attacks be avoided?