First Aid Drills and Disaster Training
By KATE ROWLAND
Every once in awhile, to really get some blood moving, the First Aid Services Team here on campus holds disaster drills. Last April we ran a drill in the Stadium, setting the scenario that a section of the stands had collapsed. We practiced radioing the disaster in and taking control, triaging and treating the victims, all the while laughing at the ridiculousness of pretending our advisor had been beheaded by falling debris. After the victims were triaged, tagged and dispatched to the hospital, the club had a little party, sort of a social gathering, a thank-you-for-coming-out-and-saving-lives. Recently, when the First Aid Team filed an appeal for more funding, I noted on the appeal that one of our expenditures from last year had been "Pizza following the disaster." The Club Coordination Council, though amused, thought I was making that expenditure up.
I've done other disaster drills since then. In September, the county held a big one at the Michiana Regional Airport, with the premise that a plane had skidded off the end of the runway, killing four and injuring 60. This time, though, instead of being a rescuer, I was working for the American Red Cross Disaster Services Team. We never got near the blood and gore; our job was family support.
I worked this disaster with a different perspective. We weren't in the action, we were stuffed away in a too-small, airless boardroom in the back hallway of the airport. The mock family members quickly grew as restless as any real family members would have. We sat there for two hours, waiting. After an hour of hearing constant sirens, we were all tense. The door would open to admit someone returning from the bathroom, and every head in the room would snap up in anticipation of information. The mock families bonded, inventing stories about their mock loved ones, guessing who would have been sitting next to whom on the plane. In our role as grief support counselors, the other Red Cross volunteers and I wandered around the room, consoling as best we could and mostly being helpless. We had no information for them, and information was all they wanted. People prayed under the guidance of the airport chaplains, tempers flared as families lashed out at anyone they could, and hysteria was beginning to take over when the airline representative came in to announce that lunch was in a half-hour.
That served to remind us it was all fake. No one was actually injured, no one was actually on the plane that didn't actually go off the runway. The mock family members settled down to while away the next 30 minutes chatting, and the grief counselors all chuckled at how quickly we start to believe that the disaster was real.
I remember that sudden flash of realization: it could have all been real. I could have been consoling real family members, waiting for word on their loved ones. I work in an emergency room, doing much the same thing, keeping families updated on their patients and keeping patients updated on their treatments. Sometimes I do forget how real their pain is, that the families aren't just acting out a part they volunteered to play and that the patients are truly in agony over the test results.
Outside of the ER, I tend to take a very American approach to disasters. When I read that 17,000 people died in earthquakes in Turkey, I sometimes forget that those are real people. And certainly the number 17,000 is meaningless to me.
Seventeen thousand is a lot of people. Imagine if, at Saturday's football game, the entire student section, from section 28 to section 36, were empty. Then imagine that sections one and two and three were all empty, too. That's about 17,000 people.
Now imagine the entire stadium being empty, and the JACC being empty at a pep rally, and the dining halls at the peak rush of dinnertime. Add them all together in your head. That's about how many people would have gone to funerals or buried the dead from that earthquake.
Twelve students were killed at Texas A&M last week. Imagine the emotional impact here if 12 Domers were killed in one freak accident. It's not just 12 dead people; it's the hundreds of family members who are grieving, grieving for real.
Think about the problems, logistical and emotional, of burying or otherwise laying to rest the 10,000 killed in the cyclone in India three weeks ago. That could be you, trying to make arrangements for the funeral of your entire family.
So next time you read that 217 people were killed in a plane crash, remember that that disaster is not a media-created happening enacted for your horrified, fascinated entertainment. Those are 217 real people, with 217 families who care about them and miss them.
And if you want to do more than think and take another step towards becoming aware of the impact of natural or other disasters on humanity, call the Red Cross. They'd be happy to get more volunteers, and you will have the chance to understand the reality of disasters.
Kate Rowland is one of the coordinators of the First Aid Services Team. She had a great time on the field at Saturday's football game. Did you see her on TV? It was neat.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not neccessarily those of The Observer.
All Viewpoint Stories for Monday, November 22, 1999
