Organisation of air raid casualties services / issued by the Home Office (Air Raid Precautions Department).

Date:
1938
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Organisation of air raid casualties services / issued by the Home Office (Air Raid Precautions Department). Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    places where they will do no damage, and the risk of any large number of casualties occurring in a country village may fortunately be expected to be remote. In such districts reliance should primarily be placed on the local doctors and district nurses, and the local organisations of the St. John Ambulance Brigade and the British Red Cross Society. Definite plans should however be made to supplement these local facilities by mobile first aid parties, available to be called from neighbouring towns if any exceptional number of casualties occurred. Similarly, as regards hospital treatment, it should not be neces- sary to reserve beds in any hospital for the reception of air raid casualties from particular villages. If such casualties should occur, they could be conveyed in improvised ambulances to the nearest available hospital. The problem in a purely rural area has, therefore, two aspects. The first is the training of the local doctors and nurses, and if possible additional voluntary personnel, in the special treatment of gas casualties, and particularly in the methods of dealing with gas- contamination. (The removal of bodily contamination can be carried out anywhere where hot water and a change of clothing are available, so long as proper precautions are taken against danger from dis- carded garments.) The second is a widespread organisation cover- ing a large area of country which would enable first aid parties to be sent where they were needed and would ensure that hospital accommodation should be available if necessity arose. 17. Areas of Intermediate Character. There are towns which are not county boroughs but which, by reason of their population and their liability to attack, will require as full a casualty organisation as county boroughs, and there are rural districts in which centres of population will require the provi sion of some kind of scheme for first aid posts at frequent intervals and for reserving hospital beds for air raid casualties. These towns and areas will require schemes modelled on the same lines as a county borough. The more the full scheme of organisation recom- mended for a county borough is modified and simplified, however, to meet other sets of circumstances, the greater will be the need for co-operation with the neighbouring authorities, for the purpose of obtaining by joint action the facilities which could not be provided specially in each part of the area. 18. Schemes for County Areas. It is for these reasons that county councils are recommended in Section 4 above to plan out large areas for the organisa- tion of complete schemes. Such schemes should arrange for the joint provision, within the group, of the necessary casualty clearing