Disaster Day

Last week, I participated in a simulation called Disaster Day. My friend Andrea, who is a nurse at one of the local hospitals, told me about the annual event, which is put on by the university's Health Science Center. Disaster Day is meant to simulate a natural disaster in order to train the soon-to-be nurses and doctors how to deal with large-scale emergencies. Andrea said she had volunteered in previous years, and roped me into doing it with her.

The disaster that was to occur — simulated only! not real! — was that a hurricane had hit the coast, and while people were evacuating inland, some tornadoes touched ground and one flattened a local high school. The story I was supposed to be portraying was one of someone who was not able to evacuate before the hurricane hit, so I ended up with Water Contamination after wading through waist-deep murky water to get to the evacuation vehicle. My case also required me to go get my face done up like I was pale and sickly, with dark bags under my eyes, and holy crap they did a good job. I looked like death.

Though they told me I was not supposed to die. 

Andrea's case was that she had been in a car crash when the tornadoes hit. The only thing she was supposed to do was die as soon as the doctors brought her into the makeshift clinic (so they'd simulate CPR/intubation to try to save her). You can't see it, but the whole side of her body was done up in purple bruising, like internal bleeding. She thinks she looks like a clown in this picture, but her chin was also "bashed up" too.

After our makeup was done, we sat around for a little bit while we waited for the simulation to be re-set. (I only volunteered in the afternoon, and they did the simulation both morning and afternoon.) Some of these people had REALLY good makeup. There were major head injuries and prosthetic lumps, people with gashed up, bloody legs. It was all very intense-looking.

Right before we were supposed to start the simulation, I headed to my "pod" — which was really just rows and rows of cots in a church gymnasium — and picked a cot to sit and read on while we waited some more. Once they were ready to start, the books and phones went away, people laid on their cots, and pandemonium ensued. People came in screaming, hauling bleeding friends in over their backs. People scrambled to find their loved ones. There was an old woman with a carpetbag purse that was wandering around like she was lost and didn't know where she was, and a girl who was either in shock or having a severe panic attack, acting totally crazy and refusing help from the doctors.

And I? I pretended to throw up a lot while nurses took my blood pressure and taped IV lines to my hands. (Because SIMULATION = NO NEEDLES hooray!)

It only went on for about an hour and a half. I got discharged from my pod about halfway through, so I went back to the volunteer desk to see if they needed me to do it again, and went and played it all through again in a different unit, with different doctors and nurses. The doctor-to-be in the second unit was awesome and asked me all the right questions that the doctor-to-be in the first unit didn't think to. Which was interesting, because I wasn't supposed to tell the doctors that I "swallowed a lot of filthy water" unless they asked about my evacuation experience; if they only asked for my symptoms, I was only supposed to say that I was, um, "spewing from both ends."

It was a good experience, more fun than I was expecting. And it was nice to see people in the medical field who were excited about the work they were doing, and were enthusiastic and helpful.

Would you participate in a disaster simulation?