Chief Marc Melfi assists as firefighters train on the assembly of the newly received Mobile Medical Units at Weber Station. Each shift will work to be familiar with the set up and break down of the new units.


Each unit is equipped with lighting and electricity.


The three tents are capable of functioning as a group or individually.


Firefighters hang lighting fixtures and air-conditioning ductwork.


All fire personnel will be trained on the workings of the units so that there will not be a need to call in a specialty team.

By Kelly Lax
The Summerville Sun

The Summerville Fire Department is becoming a major designee in local, state and county emergency preparedness. The department, under the leadership of Chief Marc Melfi, already hosts the low country's Incident Management Team. Now, the fire department has received a mobile medical unit from a grant written by Roper Hospital through DHEC from Homeland Security funding.

The Incident Management Team is a consortium of organizations funded through Homeland Security and managed by SLED. There are four such teams throughout the state. The Summerville Fire Department serves as the organizational center for the low country team. Individuals from other area fire departments, EMS, the Department of Natural Resources and each of the tri-county Emergency Management Department meet monthly and coordinate necessary planning to be carried out under any imaginable disaster conditions. The group received their first real time practice during this year's Flowertown Festival compliments of the hazardous weather that moved through town on Saturday of the event. In the briefing that followed, very few changes were suggested due to the overall success of the exercise. "We completely cleared the park in thirty minutes. The public was completely cooperative," said Chief Melfi during the debriefing.

Recently, members of the team participated in a training opportunity in California on one of the wildfire sites. Chief Melfi explained, "California has had Incident Management Teams for thirty years. We just started so there are a lot of things we can learn instead of trying to reinvent the wheel." The team base was completely self sufficient for the 1,700 individuals actually fighting the fires and all support staff necessary. "Their hospitality was next to none. The campsite was spotless. Everything was perfectly organized and implemented. We came away with much more than we could have received from classroom training", said Melfi. Future such training is already being researched and funding is provided by Homeland Security.

Summerville's Fire Department enhanced their own emergency preparedness last week when they accepted the Mobil Medical Unit from the Roper Hospital/DHEC grant. Charleston, Dorchester and Berkeley Count each received three units. N Dorchester County, one will be housed in Dorchester, one with Ashley River Fire Department and one at Summerville. Each unit consists of a generator, three tents, two large, one small, fully equipped with their own lighting and air-conditioning units, and a storage trailer that can be used as an additional unit or command center. Summerville's fire personnel are training on the assembly and breakdown. When competency is reached, a complete set up will take approximately 45 minutes. The units cost about $168,000 each. During a disaster situation, they will be used as temporary medical facilities supplies for which are housed in medical containers already distributed throughout the state. Dorchester County has eight. Summerville has two of those.