Although this was only a test of the emergency systems, police, fire, and ambulances responded as if the disaster was real.
Steam machines were even used on the fourth floor to simulate smoke, while members of the hospital's nursing school acted out the part of patients and were evacuated from the area.
While the hospital has had tests prior to this, these previously simulated disasters took place outside of the hospital - for the simulation of chemical spills or other disasters - with patients being brought to the hospital for treatment.
But what if a disaster occurred within the hospital itself?
Would the emergency systems that were used to help provide relief around the city be able to function if BMC itself had a disaster?
If the hospital had a fire
Using schoolchildren as family members of the patients, BMC tried to duplicate as closely as possible the conditions in which rescuers would face, including a panicking public.
Meanwhile, hospital staff moved to set up the emergency external operations that included a decontamination tent and a tent where patients and possible new injuries could be treated.
Police and other personnel sought to control the crowd as patients were wheeled out of the hospital's Emergency Room doors and into various treatment areas.
In case of emergency
The test is also a requirement for a $77,000 Healthcare Emergency Preparedness Grant.
Testing BMC is significant because in the event of a national emergency - similar to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 - this site will serve as the area's triage center, meaning that victims would be brought to the hospital.
Christina Filip, spokesperson for BMC, said that 75 to 100 hospital employees and other volunteers were involved in the exercise.
Police, fire, Carroll Security and McCabe Ambulance services reacted to the situation as if real to test timing and to see what needs to be honed.
To avoid a possible traffic accident, the Fire Department set up a few blocks from the hospital rather than rushing from the firehouses.
Eugene Greenan, BMC's director of community affairs, served as the incident's commander. Shawn Sugreve Amcierech, Kirsten Perdichizzi and Lenmuel Brown III, students from Bayonne High School, acted out the roles of family members.
"They told us to be a pain," Brown said.
Mickey McCabe, who also serves as the city's director of emergency management, said the hospital has regular drills of this sort in order to test various systems for dealing with chemical injuries.
"We have an emergency plan that we execute," he said. "Today it is a fire on the fourth floor of the hospital. We have to evacuate 12 patients."
Within moments after the firefighters arrived and entered the side door of the hospital, staff began to wheel out the patients, letting them walk through the decontamination tent before being rolled onto the next stage at the triage tent.
"We do the decontamination because, in this scenario, the cause of the fire is unknown," Filip said.
The tents came in packages that staff began to unfold as soon as the emergency call went out so that they were operational when the first patient arrived.
Protect medical facilities
Although the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 made the public aware of the potential for a major problem, the United States government saw the need for protecting medical facilities in the mid-1990s after a biological attack on a Tokyo subway. In 1997, Congress passed the United States Domestic Preparedness Program.
"Even when emergency responders successfully decontaminate and triage large numbers of patients at the scene, it is unlikely that area hospitals are prepared to receive these patients and treat them within the boundaries of the existing healthcare system," the executive summary of that 1997 federal law said.
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