By Ashley Morgan
BYU EMS services were called in from all over campus Tuesday night to participate in a disaster drill. The stairwell on the first floor of the Wilkinson Center was transformed into the scene of a fake disaster.
BYU Fire Marshal Mike Bledsoe and emergency preparedness coordinator Kerry Baum oversaw the event and then gave feedback on the performance of the BYU EMS team.
'These drills are always hard to do because they are not a real emergency situation,' Bledsoe said.
The fictional disaster was the explosion of a furnace. Student volunteers and CPR dummies were used to represent the victims. Students were pulled from the surrounding hallways or persuaded by their EMS friends to help.
EMS was notified by rapid deployment, which incorporated a combination of text messages, phone calls and e-mails. Arriving EMS officers were greeted by a floor strewn with students suffering from a variety of injuries. The injuries were assessed by severity. The least severe were marked with yellow tape, severe cases with red tape and the dead with black.
'I feel honored to be a red,' said Derek Ginos, 21, an accounting major, from Bountiful. 'I was hoping to be a black.'
Disaster drills are conducted on a semester basis, but the EMS never know when the exact date is going to be. Because this drill happened so late in the semester the EMS were expecting it, said EMS administrator, Sam McKnight.
The drill was carried out quickly and paused as it took some EMS members longer to arrive. The atmosphere was one of learning, the EMS stopping to ask questions of the supervising staff.
Injuries varied from a pencil stuck in an eye to difficulties breathing. Student victims tried hard to keep straight faces as they acted out their injuries. The desired serious mood was cracked a few times by nervous laughs and shifting 'dead' victims.
After the drill was completed, the volunteers were given doughnuts and juice while the EMS team received feedback.
The drill was a success overall with only two casualties from the 16 victims. Bledsoe commended the team on its performance and had only minor improvements to suggest. The area was never taped off to deter outside traffic, and the students'' victims were simply assigned cards with injuries rather than memorizing their status.
The next drill will be in April with the fire department. Unlike this drill, the April drill will involve an airborne nerve agent and overanxious EMS who run in without assessing the situation will become casualties, Baum said. The event will have 255 victims, making it a mass causalities incident.