SAN MATEO, Calif. – Area hospitals were able to ramp up quickly and handle the dozens of injured flooding in from the gas pipeline explosion and fire in San Bruno, Calif., but officials hope to use the experience to better prepare for the next major disaster.
Many of the wounded were able to drive themselves to the emergency room and have since been treated and released, though four others with severe injuries remained Friday at the St. Francis Memorial Hospital Burn Center in San Francisco.
Families told the Bay Area News Group that Joseph Ruigomez as well as Allen Braun, his wife Cindy Braun and her sister Sandy Arnold are recovering at St. Francis.
Three of the four patients are still hooked up to machines to help them breathe but expected to be taken off the devices in a few days, Dr. Michael Kulick of St. Francis said.
“They’re doing very well,” Kulick said of all four, “and I’m very pleased with their progress.”
South San Francisco Kaiser, which treated more than 20 victims, and Seton Medical Center in Daly City, which treated six patients, both went on high alert that Sept. 9 night as they braced for a potential throng of victims from the blast that razed lives and homes in the Crestmoor Canyon neighborhood.
Kaiser activated a “level 3 triage” – the highest step in the hospital’s disaster response, Kaiser spokesman Karl Sonkin said.
At that level, he said, the hospital’s doctors, nurses and other employees go under a centralized command system. “We are able to marshal our forces and make sure people we expect are treated in the emergency room quickly, efficiently and safely.”
Up to 100 doctors and nurses from other Kaiser hospitals in the region also made themselves available to help, he said, and “we did call some in.”
Seton was in a similar triage mode. “At the beginning of the evening,” Seton spokeswoman Beth Volz said, “we didn’t know how many patients to expect. A charge ER nurse said they did think it was a plane crash at first because that was what the first responders thought.”
Kaiser has held debriefing sessions to go over what it did well in and determine what lessons it can take from its response to the San Bruno catastrophe, Sonkin said. He declined to provide specifics, saying, “we are still evaluating.”
But although tragic, “it certainly helps us prepare for the next urgent crisis,” Sonkin said.