CAT2: Water Buffaloes Exercising and EXPLOSIONS
What if disaster were to strike tomorrow? Would you be prepared? The Vermont Department of Health would be, and if you live in Vermont you should feel in good hands. In early June 2014, they conducted an Emergency Preparedness exercise that was two years in the making. I was voluntold to participate, even though I do not normally work in that division. It was a tiring, stressful, fun, and highly educational experience. The biggest part of my education was essentially learning a foreign language. It probably doesn’t surprise you that the government—or any business—uses a wide assortment of acronyms, initialisms, and abbreviations. It felt like alphabet soup! But I acclimated, and soon I was spouting off sentences that included such soup as HOC, SEOC, CAT2, DLAN, CWD, GI, Epi, EPA, DMAT, SNS, and more; not to mention all the initialisms for all the hospitals’ names. When we talked about improvements for next time, I definitely suggested a translation document! When you hear or ...