The Drill

Saturday was a different story…
Anyone who talked to me on Saturday got the totally hyped up version of how I was feeling. Sorry if I was over excited but it was VERY COOL!!!

The day started at 10:00am at the fire dept’s training grounds. We were briefed on what the emergency was and then we were given a few minutes to get some basic stuff taken care of, who was in charge and who were his minions. I become triage supervisor and Danni was one of the medical personal. My job: place my team with search and rescue teams, make sure that they had all the supplies they would need and help if needed. Danni would be part of the team that would take over as soon as we got them to the ‘hospital area’. Seeing as we found more wounded than we had teams I was called out to do some transporting of people.

We had five boys from St. Pats High school that were given parts to play and lots of really cool makeup to make it real. When the earthquake hit the kids were home alone and had been having a New Years Eve party some were in the house and some were in the abandoned apartment building next door, the kid that was the ‘owner’ of the house also was babysitting his younger sister (CPR Dummy).

The first victim we found was a DOA, (a CPR dummy) he was on the roof when the earthquake hit, we had to black tag him. We moved him later in the drill. I had to move two of the victims. One had an arm laceration LOTS of blood all over the place, I mean I was kneeling in it in order to attach him to the backboard for moving. (It wasn't until later in the day that I looked at my jeans and wondered what I had all over them...it was fake blood) He was a smaller than Brennan and I have to say it wasn’t easy to move him. The second person I had to check (but not move) was a leg injury with protruding bone… (Make up was so cool) Luckily with that one, another person on the team had it all together and all I needed to do was bring some splinting materials. The last move I helped with was a (CPR dummy) guy trapped under a pile of rubble. We were out of backboards so someone from the S&R team found some plywood and we duct taped the patient to the plywood with me wrapping the duct tape around the patient and the plywood, being careful not to put any duct tape on the patients skin but also making sure he didn’t slide around. My Poppop would have been proud of me, he used duct tape the way Greg G. uses glue! We got kudos for that idea as well as me securing pieces of wood to either side of him as bracing for his neck.

The last thing that we had to do before they called an end to the drill was make sure we had all the victims. The kids kept saying that we were missing someone named Matt. Finally we took the one kid who was least injured and had him identify the DOA we found in the beginning… He was a great actor really reacted well when we had to identify ‘Matt’… Yes they named him Matt since he fell off the top of a three-story building and was flat as a mat… get it? There was quite the discussion on weather or not to bring the ‘kid’ over to identify a body. Even though it was a drill and I knew were where going to be showing him a CPR dummy it was still something we in the medical tent talked about before doing it. It really made it real.

The drill was over when the ‘fire dept’ showed up to take over. We ended up with one green tags (walking wounded), two yellow tag (serious) and four red tags (critical) and one black tag (poor Matt). That was what we were supposed to have! Whoo hoo!

Then we debriefed afterwards, what worked, what didn’t… what we could have done better. All in all it was great. The kids took pictures of their makeup, and mourning poor Matt and Capt told them that they did have to take it off before school on Monday.

Then we were sworn in as disaster first responder volunteers. I have to say there was sense of duty to raise my right hand and swear to up hold the Constitution of the U.S and of California. Puts a lot of things into place. I don't know if I feel 100% prepared in the event, and I am not sure you can ever feel 100% prepared. I do know that I have the skills to help if needed and that feels good.