The blood was only red corn syrup, but that didn’t stop EST’s red Explorers from storming Mallinckrodt yesterday as medics rushed to save “injured” victims.
Emergency Support Team (EST) medics conducted a disaster drill Sunday, attending to roughly 25 students with injuries ranging from third degree burns and broken legs to smoke inhalation and swollen abdomens.
According to Disaster Drill Co-Chair Erica Kane, a drill is conducted each semester in order to train EST medics and make sure protocols are effective. The fall drill is much smaller and usually takes place on the South 40. The spring drill is larger, with the whole team of medics participating. Victims were spread out around Mallinckrodt in the green chairs, the Gargoyle and the food court. Chairs and other debris were placed over and around student victims to make access for medics difficult.
“The team on duty receives the call and does triage,” Kane said. “Additional teams are called in, and crews are then sent into the building to assess victims.”
After the medics assess their wounds and heart rate, victims are tagged with colors that represent differing levels of injury. Eventually, medics will carry them out of the building on backboards if they are unable to walk themselves.
EST Field Director Matt Vogt noted that the point of this drill was to learn how to package patients correctly, whether on backboards, stretchers or simply carrying them out. Medics also focused on how to run a situation when there are many patients.
“We have to improvise,” Vogt said. “In real life you don’t have everything you need. The point of this is to watch the other medics, think critically and also learn from your mistakes.”
The disaster drill marks the type of situation that would be an extreme case for EST medics. Kane said a large-scale disaster hasn’t occurred on campus in close to seven years, but they still execute these drills so that all medics are well trained to handle a disaster in which they are the first medics on the scene.
Students participating in the event received makeup beforehand to make their injuries look realistic. Senior Amy Soll served as the makeup artist and said that Kane asked her to take on the job after seeing her work in the production of “Trojan Women.”
“This is a very different job from working for theatre,” Soll said. “There we do design and other preparation, but in this type of situation there’s much less prep work.”
Freshman Manav Singla had not participated in an event like this before. His injuries included blunt leg trauma that left him spread out over a couch in the green chairs area.
“It should be fun, but I don’t know what to expect,” Singla said before the drill started.
Other students found their makeup to be almost too realistic. Freshman Laelle Busch had her leg blown off and was wearing a bloody prosthetic as she lay under the stairs in Mallinckrodt.
“Five people thought I was really hurt and offered to help me,” Busch said. “It’s been a lot of fun lying around pretending to be hurt.”
University police department officials were also on hand to monitor the situation and make sure protocols were being executed correctly.
EST functions 24 hours a day, seven days a week during the school year. Three medics are sent out on all calls after completing EMT training, which involves exams, class, clinical and ambulance hours. These student medics deal with everything from sports injuries to cardiac arrests.