In large, complex medical incidents, it may be necessary to coordinate the transport of patients from two or more treatment areas simultaneously. This may require the creation of a Transportation Branch and the assignment of a Transportation Branch Director to coordinate transportation functions for all of the treatment locations.

Transportation Branch has the following responsibilities:

The following represents the standard operations that will be performed by the Transportation Branch:

  1. Coordinate the assignment of rescues from Staging area to various sectors (e.g., East Transportation, West transportation, LZ).
  2. Determine hospital availability status through mobile cellular phone.
  3. Coordinate all patient allocation and hospital destination.
  4. Coordinate the movement of patients from treatment areas to Rescue loading areas or helicopter landing zone.
  5. Maintain an accounting of all patients and patient destinations.
  6. Ensure the safety and accountability of all assigned personnel.
  7. Provide frequent progress reports to Command.
  8. Notify hospital (through Dispatch) of estimated arrival time of specific rescues or helicopters.
  9. Notify Command when all IMMEDIATE patients have been transported.

The Transportation Branch Director will be stationed at a central location, preferably at or close to the Command Post. Transportation Sector personnel will be assigned to each treatment area as well as at Staging and at the Helicopter Landing Zone. The Transportation Branch Director will coordinate all of these assignments and assign the necessary resources. Each Sector (e.g., "East Transportation Sector"," West Transportation Sector," "Staging," "LZ") will require at least one full company.

Due to the complexity of this operation, a separate radio channel should be assigned exclusively to the Transportation Branch. This will facilitate the amount of communications necessary between the Branch Director and the assigned Sector officers at each location. The Transportation Branch Director will handle all communications with Dispatch ( or any other channel assigned by Dispatch).

The Transportation Sector personnel in each location will communicate their transportation needs directly to the Transportation Branch Director to obtain resources. The Transportation Branch Director will then direct Staging to assign one or more rescues to a specific loading area.

When a rescue or ambulance is ready for loading, the Sector officer should advise Transportation Branch of the number of patients being loading into a rescue and their severity. The Branch Director will then advise the Transportation Sector officer of the destination hospital. This Sector officer will advise the rescue personnel of their hospital destination. The Transportation Branch will advise receiving hospitals of patient’s enroute, their triage status, and provide an ETA.

Each Transportation Sector officer will also remove a transportation tracking slip from the triage tag of each patient and write in the transport unit and hospital destination. Other information (name, age, injuries) can be completed on the tracking slip as time permits. These tracking slips are kept by Transportation Sector officers to maintain an accounting of all patients leaving the Sector. They can also be verified by Command, who has the initial triage tracking slips.

The Transportation Branch Director will assign necessary resources to the Helicopter Landing Zone to move patients from the treatment areas over to LZ. This may require the use of a rescue. Helicopters should be used to transport IMMEDIATE patients to more distant appropriate medical facilities.

The Transportation Sector personnel assigned to each Treatment Area will perform the same function as established for an incident with a single treatment area. The Transportation Sector officer functions as a coordinator and resource allocator, consolidating communications with Dispatch and Command.