Black Hills Surgical Hospital & RCFD conduct mock fire drill

RAPID CITY, S.D. — At approximately 10:45 a.m. on Monday, April 11, the Black Hills Surgical Hospital and Rapid City Fire Department conducted a mock fire drill.

The hospital says the drill simulates highly unlikely scenarios and will provide their staff and first responders with the experience and knowledge on how to handle those situations should they occur.

“It’s an important scenario because it’s challenging but also within the operating room there are instances where we use different machines that could potentially, very rare, but cause a fire.” said Black Hills Surgical Hospital Chief Nursing Officer Kris Simonds

Rapid City Fire Department Battalion Chief Calen Maningas said the scenario involved someone who was injured and had to be evacuated to an ambulance where all the necessary life-saving interventions were performed before being transported to Monument Health.

“We will all after this moment go into what is called ‘After Action Reviews.’ So they are going to conduct one themselves and they’ll talk about what went good, what went bad and what needs to be changed and then we at the Rapid City Fire Department will do the same. Any situation, bad or good, we can derive something out of that and learn from it. We just appreciate the working relationships with all the other agencies and the ability to come out and do this just so we’re all better prepared to serve our community.”