June 18th, 2010

From The Express-Times:

FOUNTAIN HILL | Twenty-one victims, all ashen-colored and suffering from a wide range of maladies, lined a third-floor conference room Thursday morning at St. Luke’s Hospital. Staff, firefighters and emergency workers buzzed about trying to ensure a smooth transport of patients to the emergency room.

They were never in danger. Those gray-faced victims were just inflated plastic mannequins standing in for possible burn and smoke inhalation victims as the hospital and local emergency services drilled for a pair of evacuations, tested new equipment and looked for problems that might arise if the hospital needed to fight two fires.

“Practice makes perfect,” said Mark Lohman, nurse manager of the emergency room at St. Luke’s Allentown after a host of victims were carried from the hospital’s fourth floor to a triage unit. “We made some mistakes and we’ll learn from them. You can never be too prepared.”