Disaster interface with volunteers/bystander helpers

[mycrofft]

If you have been involved in disaster responses and were working around/against/with helping people thrown into medical stuff but unprepared by civilian practice, can you please share the issues (positive and negative) that rose, and how they could have helped out better?

I am thinking especially about CERT, AM Red Cross vollies, various cadets or scouts, spontaneous unaffiliated volunteers (SUV's) , maybe local bystanders.

 

[usafmedic45]

They should be limited to basically be logistics personnel. To be more blunt, gofers.

 

[mycrofft]

Agreed. I'm looking for first hand anecdotes.

We had a cop put six drunken college bystanders to work lifting a car off a victim and my partner one night.
My post and query is sparked by watching a video of a CERT team learning how to put a spineboarded simulated victim (actual live uninjured chunky person) onto a manual ambulance litter, raise it, then wheel away in a parking lot.
h34r:
I have questioned the appropriateness of the training, and the safety issue of raising and lowering a real person just for amateur training.