http://www.rockymounttelegram.com/news/paramedic-students-train-for-disaster-scenario-976728.html

Paramedic students train for disaster scenario

By Mike Hixenbaugh
Rocky Mount Telegram

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Sweat dripped from Anthony Warrick’s face as he reported the woman’s injuries to the triage commander. The middle-aged victim was unresponsive, Warrick shouted, suffering from second- and third-degree burns and losing blood.

A few moments later, the paramedic student stood chugging a water bottle and laughing with a friend about the simulated horror they had just emerged from. Warrick was one of about 20 Nash Community College EMS students tested Tuesday in a mass-casualty simulation at the school’s safety training facility.

Todd Messer, coordinator of the college EMS program, said he hopes his students never have to deal with the scenario presented Tuesday inside the college burn laboratory — a single-engine airplane crashed into a commercial office building — but if it were to happen, Messer said he hopes they’ll be ready.

“This sort of situation isn’t common, and it’s difficult to recreate a disaster scenario without actually doing it,” Messer said. “But we try to make it as real as we possibly can.”

The paramedic students stormed into the disaster simulation with no knowledge of what awaited them. About a dozen students were scattered throughout the two-story burn center imitating a slew of injuries, ranging from minor cuts and burns to cardiac arrest.

The students crawled and climbed through wreckage inside the dark, steel structure as would-be victims called and screamed for help. One man had a broken leg. Another was crushed under a collapsed ceiling. Inside the crashed plane on the second floor, a pregnant women had gone into early labor, and students were expected to deliver the baby inside the wreckage.

Below on the first floor, several babies and child care workers were trapped in a nursery.

“It’s very hot in there,” Warrick said, after carrying a woman out on stretcher. “It’s dark. It’s hard to breath. You can’t see; you can’t hear. The air is filled with smoke and soot. That’s about as real as you can make it.”

Fellow student John Green agreed.

“You can’t cheat and take the easy way out,” Green said.

The simulation represents a milestone for Nash Com-

munity College paramedic students, instructor Jamie Moss said.

The students, whose ages range from 18 to late 50s, should complete the program within the next month before applying for state certification.

“You can’t ever truly prepare for a mass emergency like this,” Moss said. “But this does test the students’ ability to react under pressure. That’s important.”