World Cup soccer is underway in Seattle, with visitors expected to be in the hundreds of thousands. Emergency services have ramped up readiness. This includes Airlift Northwest, the air medical transport program for UW Medicine.
Executive Director Jeffrey Richey says the medical flight-service team has spent the past year preparing for the event’s unprecedented demands. Readiness has focused on training, coordination and rapid response across Washington state.
“We are going back to our foundation, which is our clinical excellence, and doing the hundred hours of training that we do every single year, so that we can respond to emergencies that are out in the areas to bring trauma patients into Harborview Medical Center,” Richey said.
The preparation included planning for mass-casualty incidents. Airlift has the capability to deploy multiple helicopters at once.
The team is also poised to respond to a wide range of scenarios during the soccer tournament, he said.
“We've had several events that have happened over the last couple of years to be able to prep us for the World Cup and what we might expect,” Richey said.
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