Any walking wounded from a nuclear, biological or chemical incident in the ACT can expect to quickly get very naked and very wet thanks to flat pack decontamination units kept at the Calvary and Canberra hospitals.
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Calvary Emergency Department co-director and nurse practitioner Matt Luther broke the tent-like structure out of its box on Friday to ensure enough hospital staff are trained in its erection and operation.
"It has taken us about an hour and a half to set the decontamination unit up," he said. "But this was part of a training exercise where everything was being explained as we went along. It would normally take 10 to 12 people wearing isolation suits about 30 minutes."
While Calvary has one fixed decontamination unit - a shower outside the entrance to the emergency department - this would be quickly overwhelmed in the event of a mass casualty incident.
Such an incident could be the result of an act of terrorism or a more commonplace emergency.
"When you talk about this the first thing everybody thinks of is terrorism," Mr Luther said. "But there are a lot of other scenarios it is important to have this for. Terrorism is actually the least likely."
He cited an incident some years ago when an elderly Canberran had been working with an old tin of pesticide in his shed.
"It (the pesticide) had gone off and was pressurised inside the tin," Mr Luther said. "The contents, organophosphates, sprayed out all over him. If there had been other people there at the time we would have had a multi-casualty incident."
Given it takes 15 minutes to decontaminate a single individual you wouldn't want to be the last of five or six people being processed through a single booth decontamination unit; you would be waiting for well over a very anxious hour.
Built on a folding frame that concertinas down to a cube less than a metre square, the unit has three lanes - two for walking wounded and a centre aisle for people on stretchers.
It is divided into red, orange and green zones.
"You enter through the red zone where you strip and place all your clothes and belongings in a bag," Mr Luther said.
"You then move into the orange zone which is a booth which has multiple shower nozzles. There are people there in isolation suits who make sure you don’t miss any spots and the bag containing your belongings is washed as well."
After this victims move into the green zone where they leave their clothes and other kit - which will most likely never be seen again - and "dress" in a hospital gown.
The next patient, meanwhile, is already starting the process at the other end.
While the decontamination procedure is uncomfortable (even though the unit can be heated through an external ventilation system) and requires modesty to be checked at the door, it is a lifesaver.
The sooner radioactive, biological or chemical contaminants are washed away the more likely it becomes that individuals will escape long-term effects such as sickness or death.
The Calvary unit, like all the others of its kind, is highly portable and can be packed into a shipping container which is kept on site and then sent anywhere in Australia within a matter of hours.
Mr Luther said while it was something the hospital had to have, it was also something he hoped would never have to be used.
