 weapons coupled with the fighting skill of the American soldier stands ready on the alert all over the world to defend this country you the American people against aggression this is the big picture an official television report to the nation from the United States Army now to show you part of the big picture here is Sergeant Stewart Queen our big picture for today takes the form of a pictorial report we will be showing three separate stories instead of the usual single subject however the three stories are interrelated the first deals with medicine the second with experimentation and the third with construction but all are concerned with some of the Army's peacetime roles now part one of today's pictorial report none of nature's malevolent forces strikes with greater violence than the tornado the tornado's wake is a path of wreckage and annihilation it is as though some giant steel ball had been rolled along the earth crushing and smashing all that stood in its way unfortunately tornadoes may strike in almost any section of the United States usually with little or no warning worse than the effects on homes and business property is the tornadoes impact on human life in its wake to our left the killed and maimed the tornado is a natural disaster which tries a community's resources to the extreme recently Brooke Army Hospital in Texas undertook a test to see just how effective it would be in handling the mass civilian casualties of a natural disaster the mock disaster was later to affect the city of San Antonio in the wake of the mock tornado there will be nearly 1000 simulated casualties to be treated by Brooke Army Hospital of this number 800 cases will be listed as serious injuries the remaining 200 cases will require emergency treatment playing the parts of the thousands of simulated civilian casualties are the soldiers ordinarily on duty with the Brooke Medical Center schools and laboratories according to the fictional account of the disaster outlined by the designers and testers of the operation a tornado has swooped through northwest San Antonio early in the morning it has left behind demolished buildings wrecked homes and raised factories to represent the kinds of cases which would actually exist under such circumstances army doctors have compiled a list of injuries based upon genuine disaster reports of the past the simulated casualties are made up to represent these injuries as faithfully as possible who recreate conditions as they would exist in such an emergency the hospital staff will continue to care for its 700 genuine military patients as usual the additional 1000 simulated civilian casualties represent an enormous extra burden designed to test the hospital's facilities to the extreme other of the army's resources also come up for testing as a part of the exercise the army's helicopters usually found serving casualties in battle are converted for civilian use here today they are being used in a shuttle service between the medical center and the simulated disaster so such fast airborne transportation would be used for carrying injured civilians most in need of emergency hospital attention the exercise called fire drill has been planned carefully to utilize all of the staff supplies and equipment available hours after the tornado struck and civilian authorities requested military aid the first of the 1000 simulated patients begin to arrive the hospital service club becomes the reception center and to analyze and evaluate the exercise our umpires both from Brooke Medical Center and from the Surgeon General's office in Washington the lessons learned here today will help prepare a blueprint for all the hospitals throughout the country which are drawing up plans to meet emergency situations when the alert signal was heard the service club was cleared of furniture and recreation facilities and then converted into a huge emergency room and sorting station specific areas within the auditorium have been set aside for cases of varying degrees of seriousness as far as possible every situation an emergency has been prepared for on the tags which the patients wear special symbols are used to help doctors recognize immediately the casualties status while buses trucks and private cars are carrying the tornadoes victims to the receiving station army helicopters are speeding the emergency cases to the medical center techniques developed in Korea and in army training programs for swiftly carrying casualties by air for prompt medical attention are applied in today's exercise here as at the receiving center umpires will check and report on the care and efficiency with which the simulated casualties are handed converted service club medical officers give emergency treatment as they sort the patients into categories one group is slated for immediate treatment the second priority goes to those listed for later treatment and a third classification is made for those to get treatment when personnel and space become available at every stage umpires check on the treatment given double checking on the care administered and recommendations made by the doctors once the casualty has received emergency treatment and been sorted is ready to be sent to one of the main hospital buildings where surgical staffs and equipment are waiting ambulances and buses are pressed into service to take patients to the main hospital building realism is the keynote of the exercise every contingency has been thought of and planned for chaplains are on hand to give consolation to the critically injured and sacramental attention to the died civilian volunteers man the typewriters which keep patient and hospital records up to date and accurate and information service is in operation to help anxious relatives learn about the conditions of patients admitted to the hospital the public information office is providing lists of casualties to news media quickly from these carefully compiled records it is possible to tell whether a victim of the storm is in a ward surgery or has been discharged for the simulated casualties whose condition demands the most immediate attention those who might not survive the short ambulance ride from receiving center to hospital proper additional helicopter services available today's exercise is covering a 12-hour period this means that casualties are arriving at a clip faster than one every minute the fast moving helicopters shuttling between receiving center and the hospital's wards and operating rooms helps feed up the flow of patients the actual moving and simulated treatment of the casualties is an enormous flow of medical supplies just as the simulated casualties are treated as though they were genuine so the hospital staff supplies the supplemental goods and facilities which would be needed if the casualties were genuine beds bandages medicines and towels linens and splints antibiotics and surgical instruments although the simulated casualties don't actually need blood transfusions and plasma volunteer donors really do give their blood to help enlarge the hospital supply against the day when a genuine emergency might exist and this blood be sorely needed every one of the hospital's operating rooms has gone into round the clock service again although no actual operations are conducted the variety of simulated cases presented to the surgeons demand that they test the ready availability of more than 50 different kinds of surgical instruments following the successful conclusion of operation fire drill the findings of the umpires are presented and discussed the procedures adopted and the conclusions reached here at brook army hospital may prove invaluable to many other hospitals throughout the country in time of disaster where the first chapter in today's pictorial report dealt with the role of army medicine in relation to civilian disaster our second episode is concerned with the job of the army's core of engineers and the work it does in minimizing the effects of disasters before they occur while the tornado usually confines its violent destruction to a narrow path over a relatively short distance hitting and moving fast the hurricane and other of nature's wild disturbances usually strikes along a broad front with sustained violence the tearing winds torrential rains and surging tides usually result in floods in recent years the hurricanes which have hit the Atlantic coast of the United States appear to be striking the eastern coast of the country with increased frequency the lives lost total in the thousands the property damage has run into hundreds of millions of dollars at such times of crisis civilian and military populations alike combine efforts to rescue and relieve the victims of the storm but to help prevent such scenes from reoccurring the United States Army is conducting experiments which will result in curbing some of the worst effects of hurricane ties playing an important part in helping to minimize the effects of future storms is the army's core of engineers waterways experiment station at vicksburg mississippi one of the projects here entails a study of Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay area technicians at the experiment station have constructed a scale model replica of most of the state of Rhode Island and part of massachusetts abnormal tides which usually accompany hurricanes sometimes flood the low lying areas around the bay causing severe property damage and loss of lives the army's waterways experiment station is trying here to discover a plan promising success in preventing hurricane tide damage a manually operated generator is used to reproduce hurricane tides in miniature on this scale model every hurricane of the past can be recreated and its effects observed many different proposals have been made to reduce hurricane damage caused to this section of New England at the experiment station every plan is put into effect on a small scale and then tested under simulated hurricane conditions in this way the engineers will be able to foretell at minimum cost which plan will benefit the area most cutting loss of life and property damage in the future compared with the duration of tornadoes and hurricanes floods are natural disasters of longer lasting and more widespread destruction when one of america's might hear rivers overflows its banks hundreds of thousands of square miles of land are inundated the population must not only suffer while the floods rise but wait helplessly for the waters to receive and even when the river has returned to its place between the banks weeks and even months may pass before the stricken communities will be able to return to normal and just as the waterways experiment station at vicksburg is seeking to minimize the effects of hurricane tides in the new england area so too it is engaged in efforts to stem floods in the mississippi river valley a model of the entire area has been constructed to scale to further studies of the engineers in many a chore the waters of the mississippi flow all the way from the northern reaches of the united states to the gulf of mexico this hydraulic model covers two hundred and twenty acres the primary aim of the model is to aid in planning for flood control measures throughout the mississippi basin this project represents almost 15 years of detailed study and careful planning such models properly constructed and verified faithfully simulate actual or hypothetical floods they graphically and quickly illustrate the need for specific flood protection measures and by testing flood controls in miniature before measures are adopted the taxpayers are saved millions of dollars yearly the effectiveness of any given plan can be estimated in miniature at a fraction of the cost of a full-scale tryout growing out of such experiments are projects like the bank revetments of the lower mississippi throughout its history the mississippi has been a meandering river that has constantly changed its course in order to keep the river within its banks for navigation and flood control the army's core of engineers has developed a revolutionary embankment control method after the bank has been cleared of trees and undergrowth and all snags and obstructions have been removed from the water at the bank's edge the bank itself is graded to the proper slope which will give the greatest ability once the banks have been graded the strange but effective sinking unit moves into place the job of the sinking unit is to lay a flexible concrete covering over the banks of the river individual wire and concrete squares are assembled on the sloping barge day to form a mattress 150 feet wide to keep the often willful and tempestuous mississippi flowing where it will do the most good and the least harm the sinking units which lay the mats work day and night the year-round along the lower mississippi more than 326 miles of riverbank have been blanketed with concrete mattresses the stabilization of the river by such methods is vital to safe and dependable navigation and to efficient trustworthy flood control moreover every additional mile of mattress laid further strengthens and protects the sections already completed in such ways the army's core of engineers follows through on the investigations of the waterways experiment station and works in the best interests of not only the military but the civilian well-being of the nation the work of the core of engineers is not of course confined to flood and hurricane fighting in addition to scores of military assignments both in war and peace army engineers apply themselves to many projects of great benefit to our civilian population since 1824 the core of engineers has been carrying out a program to improve the rivers and harbors of the nation unless continually dredged many river channels tend to fill in obstructing navigation pipeline dredges with their mechanical rotating blades loosen riverbed mud which is sucked up through pipes the mud is later disposed of in designated areas leaving the channel deeper wider and safer for navigation designed by the core of engineers the essay on's is the world's largest sea-going dredge in New York Harbor where dredging is essential to maintain the necessary depth near piers and docks and in the channels the essay on's has removed millions of cubic yards of mud year after year when the long drags are lowered to the bottom powerful pumps suck up mud and discharge it into huge tanks inside the ship when the holes are full the essay on's puts out to see where her cargo is emptied into deep water another familiar site in New York Harbor is an odd floating contraption this one is appropriately named the drift master it's a sort of water-bound vacuum cleaner sweeping up the harbor surface of floating debris which could cause delay and damage to vessels moving in and out of port another phase of engineer activity has been the testing of the DeLong pier investigating its possible application to military operations the portable pier is actually a floating dock barge which can be towed into position it then sinks its own piles and raises itself out of the water to the level desired by means of air jacks this 800 ton structure can be made operational in a matter of days ordinarily months are required to construct the standard pier bridge construction is usually the job most closely identified with the core of engineers the bridges themselves are of many types each is designed to fulfill the demands of time and place it may be a floating bridge for a quick crossing or a fixed bridge which is expected to last for years like this bridge in Korea waterway experiment station investigations have proved that one of our main bulwarks against floods are dams North Dakota's garrison dam is the largest rolled filled earth structure ever undertaken by man modern earth moving equipment human engineering skill and the core's experience have made possible a project which is 20 times the size of the great pyramid of Egypt Fort Peck Dam at the headwaters of the Missouri River in Montana is a reservoir for navigation flood control power and irrigation it is estimated that in the past 14 years this multi-purpose project has prevented about 60 million dollars in flood damage Fort Randall dam and reservoir in northern Nebraska is another major core of engineers project this dam is a second unit in the comprehensive plan for the development of the Missouri River basin by providing flood control storage it will protect against destructive waters from Fort Randall to the mouth of the Missouri River chain of rocks rapids located on the Mississippi River above St. Louis presented a troublesome hazard to navigation to remove this barrier to inland shipping the core of engineers set to work constructing a canal and locks for nearly four years now the canal has been open to river traffic the all-time peak of core of engineer achievement came of course during World War two advanced air bases were built in record time in all parts of the world often under conditions that might be considered impossible by anyone but the engineers there were countless water supply problems solved in jungle and desert alike more than 11,000 miles of pipeline were laid to carry fuel to the remotest arms of our fighting forces the engineers are road builders the Alcan Highway is a milestone in the history of engineering over 1600 miles long it narrowed the distance between us and our northern outpost Alaska many experts warned that the Lido road couldn't be built the tropical growth was too dense there were too many trees too many shelves to carve in the towering rock of mountain size this was another kind of combat but in this war nature gave way to the engineers and our trucks rolled through the wilderness of Southeast Asia with the ball churno in Italy for bulldozer drivers died at their wheels the river still raged but our army was soon across on another engineer core bridge perhaps the most remembered crossing of World War two was over the Romagin Bridge at the Rhine River the bridge had been dynamite by retreating Germans but a forward engineer unit made immediate repairs and in the next hours a substantial number of our troops crossed to the other side by the time the Germans knocked out the bridge we had pushed two miles deep into enemy territory helping to shorten the Rhine campaign the biggest single undertaking of the engineers construction program was the two billion dollar atomic bomb project Manhattan District the name given to this monumental building job included plants in various parts of the country but all interrelated so the atomic era was ushered in today the core of engineers is approaching its 183rd year its history has been colorful its accomplishments inspiring the men privileged to call themselves engineers are justly proud of this oldest professional service in the army there is every reason to expect the achievements of the future will eventually outshine those of the past these then are but a few examples of the way in which the United States Army has helped and is prepared to help in the future to protect American lives and homes illustrations of how military power and organization are used for peaceful ends now this is sergeant Stuart Queen inviting you to be with us again next week for another look at your army and action on the big picture the big picture is a weekly television report to the nation on the activities of the army at home and overseas produced by the army pictorial center presented by the United States Army in cooperation with this station you too can be an important part of the big picture you can proudly serve for the best equipped the best trained the best fighting team in the world today the United States Army