Duluth hospital welcomes police, fire training as demolition nears – Duluth News Tribune

DULUTH — Even as Essentia Health continues plans to demolish an old hospital recently replaced by the new St. Mary's Medical Center, the health care provider is putting its now-vacant facility to use in its final days.

In late May, local law enforcement and firefighters held three days of training in the building, simulating how they would respond in the event of an active shooter emergency.

“We wanted this training to be closely focused on patient care and evacuating patients from a scene where an active shooting may have occurred,” said Duluth Police Lt. Steve Ring.

In addition to directly involving the Duluth Police and Fire Department, other local agencies were also invited to participate in or observe the exercise. The training attracted firefighters from Hermantown and Superior, as well as personnel from Proctor, UMD campus police, the Minnesota State Patrol, St. Louis County and Border Control the United States.

Duluth Deputy Fire Chief Dan Lattner noted that an active shooter emergency would require nothing less than a region-wide response.

“So just bringing all these different agencies together and making those connections is helpful, because if an incident like this happened, it's really a situation where we would call all cars,” he said. -he declares.

Lattner described the ability to quickly gather and coordinate all relevant resources as crucial. “Things can happen so quickly, and a difficult situation usually goes well or badly within the first hour. »

Ring described the training as “extremely valuable” and said, “We couldn't be more grateful to Essentia and their willingness to let us come into their space and use it for training. This creates a very real atmosphere for us.

Lattner said they wanted to take full advantage of such a unique opportunity.

“We haven’t had a really good cross training like this in probably four or five years,” he said.

More than three months of planning went into emergency simulations, with local volunteer actors playing the roles of the injured, evacuees and attackers.

“It provided a huge degree of realism,” Lattner said. “Some of them really embraced their role, I would say. They created a lot of drama. They bothered some officers, just like they would in real life. They distracted the rescuers.

Of course, no real weapons were used during the training exercises.

Local authorities used different parts of the hospital to implement different scenarios.

Ring said the staff was able to create scenes to imitate first responders called not only to a medical facility, but also to a shooting at an office, a school, a commercial space such as a mall and a building. 'apartments.

“The building has so many different dimensions that you can do whatever you want with it,” he said.

Luke Eastep, Essentia’s facilities technology manager, said his organization was proud to host the training.

“It was a great opportunity for us and for the entire community. I think it makes us all safer when this type of training can take place,” he said.

Estep pointed out that the old St. Mary Medical Center building presents many challenges due to the large number of different access points.

“This makes containment extremely difficult. And that’s also one of the many benefits of our new building: it’s much easier for law enforcement and firefighters to secure and navigate,” Eastep said.

He acknowledged that emotions can sometimes run high in a hospital setting and said Essentia security staff are trained to defuse potentially dangerous conflicts. However, local authorities are sometimes called upon to intervene.

Lattner said Essentia staff knows its facilities inside and out and is always ready to help first responders efficiently navigate their often complicated properties and quickly get to where services are needed.

Lattner still hopes to return to the old hospital several times for additional training before it is demolished.

“As soon as we can get in touch with the demo contractor and we can start drawing lines in the sand, we're going to send our people out there as much as possible, to the point where it's no longer safe for the people. us for being in this building,” he said.

Lattner explained that the building provides training opportunities on a multitude of fronts, including forcible entry response, elevator rescues, search procedures, confined space rescues and fire breaching. walls. The firefighters also use the old hospital to conduct drills with their new dog, Jack, a K-9 specially trained to help detect arson.

“What we could do in this building is just limitless,” Lattner said. “We could stay in this building for years and not repeat the same things. So we're going to do everything we can before this thing becomes a pile of rubble.

Essentia has hired Rachel Contracting to lead the demolition efforts, and Eastep said work could begin in a few weeks. One of the first jobs will be to remove walkways leading to the building, a task that will require the temporary closure of some surrounding streets. The timing of these closures is still being confirmed.

Although Essentia explored the possibility of using explosive charges to implode the 10-story building, it opted for a less dramatic and more methodical mechanical demolition process that will likely extend into winter.

All hazardous materials will first be removed from the building before demolition begins, as well as salvage of materials, such as pipes and scrap metal. Rachel Contracting intends to use some of the latest technology in the field, including deploying a remote-controlled Brokk demolition robot, Eastep said.

Concrete from the building will be transported and crushed off-site for possible reuse as fill on other projects.

Eastep said it's unclear what will happen to the site after the old hospital is removed. Current plans call for it to be planted with vegetation and used as green space, at least in the interim until its long-term future is clear.

“The only thing it won’t be is something like a parking lot,” he said. “It will be something for the public good.”

Tonya Loken, Essentia's director of community relations, said the property, which spans a full block, was offered to the University of Minnesota as a potential site for a new academic health center.