Mass casualty incident

A mass casualty situation is one in which the number of victims exceeds the capacity of available emergency services. It is differentiated from a multiple casualty incident, where there are a large number of victims, but that are within the capacity of the local resources, perhaps with the need to extend working hours, bring in off-duty personnel, etc.

Both are situations where triage is required. In a mass casualty situation, the triage process is likely to assign some victims to "expectant" or "moribund" categories, where only comfort measures will be provided to those conscious victims in the category, in which all are expected to die.