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economist suntribune in our community thursday oct 3 2002 15 markham firefighters carry hoses along a smokefilled corridor at markham stouflville hospital during mock disaster an explosion and fire on tuesday explosion tests hospital by kathleen griffin staff writer markham stouflville hospital tested its evacua tion strategy tuesday staging a mock fire and explo sion that forced about 50 volunteer patients from their beds to the parking lot six months in the planning york regional police markham fire and york region ems all participated in the fake disaster handling triage crowd control and rescuing a man supposedly hurt in the explosion in a third floor boiler room which knocked out a wall the explosion a code green also caused flooding and the loss of power as smoke generated by machines filled the hallways two or three patients from every clinical depart ment evacuated with their doctors nurses and health care aides to four sites outside the goal is to test evacuation routes and proce dures and identify any gaps explained hospital spokesperson pam brodie as well its to test com munications with external agencies something thats usually faulted when situations like this occur she said extra staff were assigned for the day to ensure patient care wasnt jeopardized the exercise took more than four hours as staff and emergency services personnel were debriefed after patients returned inside photos by steve somerville markham emstriage operations supervisor tim mcmullin checks on patients at the triage cen tre in the hospitals park ing lot patients are led out of markham stoufrville hospital to a triage site in the hospital parking lot