The three-day drill, coordinated at SHC by the Office of Service Continuity and Disaster Planning (OSCDP), is soliciting volunteers, including physicians, to participate.

“To the best of our knowledge, an evacuation exercise of this scope has never before been attempted in the United States,” said the OSCDP’s Karen Hoexter.

Each participating hospital in Santa Clara County will staff and equip one unit at a facility in Gilroy with personnel, equipment and volunteer patients and then practice discharging patients from the hospital, loading them into ambulances and helicopters and transporting them to various receiving facilities. The exercise is an attempt to learn what fire and police need from hospitals and an opportunity for fire and police to learn what the hospital’s processes are during an evacuation.

A “tabletop” exercise designed to prepare for the drill will be held at Stanford on July 24.

For further information or to volunteer, contact Hoexter at Khoexter@stanford med.org, or call (650) 723-4785.