Trained for mass casualties, emergency personnel encounter few problems

On the fourth floor of the FleetCenter, behind Section 15, Dr. Katherine Brinsfield and Dr. Liz Temin are standing next to a stretcher piled with medical equipment, outside a room with a gray door with a red cross painted in the middle. Two metal-framed beds draped by white sheets, surrounded by curtains, lay empty in the middle of the room. A stethoscope dangles from the brace holding a TV to the wall. Blue gloves, radio battery chargers, bandages decorated with dinosaurs and dragons, orange fireman-style hard hats and an assortment of medical bags line the tables and shelves around the room. Paramedic Lenny Shubitowski and a few other emergency medical personnel watch the Red Sox game on the TV, watch the Democratic delegates passing by and talk into their radios to other Boston Emergency Medical Service workers stationed throughout the FleetCenter.

Monday night was quiet at the EMS outpost for the 2004 Democratic National Convention. "Most of it's been minor GI," Shubitowski said. That's gastrointestinal problems, per the not-so-healthy FleetCenter food. "A lot of headaches," he added. The EMS handed out aspirin for pain in the brain. Delegates with new shoes stopped by for bandages to cover their blisters. There were a few cuts, a few minor bruises. In all, the EMS treated 87 patients the first two nights of the convention, including six who were taken to the hospital and later released for minor lacerations and medical problems.

The EMS is emblematic of all of the security apparatus at the DNC: a lot of planning, a lot of training, and then a lot of waiting around, hoping nothing really bad happens. EMS Chief Richard Serino, a 31-year veteran who worked his way up through the ranks of the service, from emergency medical technician to paramedic to supervisor to chief, used federal money from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to provide extra hazardous materials and mass casualty training to Boston's EMTs and paramedics in preparation for the convention. With that training in hand, Serino's 360 employees are working 12 hours on, 12 hours off each day with no days off this week, ready to handle the aftermath of a major terrorist attack, but so far dealing only with bumps, falls and migraines.

In addition to the crew in the EMS room on the fourth floor of the FleetCenter, four teams of EMTs and paramedics are stationed with stretchers and equipment in the FleetCenter. An additional three units are stationed just outside the center, along with an all-terrain vehicle and two ambulances. Just outside the security perimeter surrounding the Hard Zone, ambulances and all-terrain vehicles wait to ferry patients to the hospital. Two 35-member disaster medical response teams also stand at the ready just outside the Hard Zone. EMS personnel on bikes are stationed around the city to deal with protester and tourist injuries, too. On top of that, mass decontamination units-long yellow tents with three lanes of shower nozzles-stand at the ready around the FleetCenter.

"You prepare for the worst and you hope for the best," Shubitowski said.

As the FleetCenter emptied Monday night, the EMS workers happily had little to do. A few speeched-out delegates asked for aspirin. Serino guided a woman on a stretcher through the departing crowd to an ambulance outside the Hard Zone, where she was taken to the hospital for some minor medical problems-privacy rules prevented him from going into details, Serino said. EMS personnel elsewhere in Boston had an equally calm, but much more inspiring night.

"Life goes on in the city," Serino said. "One of our crews delivered a baby in Roxbury."

It's a boy.