2005-04-16 - 2:04 a.m.
The other day I got to go as an observer to a Heavy Urban Search and Rescue exercise. They had a mock building collapse set up, and they had to practice extricating people from the building (including performing some on-site 'amputations', which involved people wearing a combination of mannequin limbs and pig joints to provide the most realistic amputation experience for the team). Then there was a mock hospital set up to accept the 'casualties' - students for the most part made up by a specialised make-up team to look like they had various wounds.
Our office was really only supposed to be there as observers, but we were invited to A) pretend to be hysterical relatives and harrass the people running the mock family information centre or B) get made up with a minor wound, in order to test the triage system that was supposed to route the minor wounds to another area. Not everyone was keen to get made up as though they had just been pulled from a collapsed building, but my inner 12-year old boy took over and I told the makeup guy to give me something gory. I ended up with a disturbingly convincing impalement - a piece of debris right through the arm.
Which actually caused some complications - the triage nurse sent me to Minor Wounds, who took one look at it and said "that's not minor!" and sent me back again. I then spent quite a long time sitting in the mock ER waiting area, which was sadly very like my experience of actual ERs. At least this time they gave me a sandwhich.
It's amazing with these exercises to watch people's inner drama queens come out - there was screaming and yelling, soem rather convincing faiting spells, a near fist-fight in the family information room, and security had to wrestle someone to the ground when they attempted to storm the Hospital Command Centre. This is more fun than being a bureacrat usually gets to be...
