At lunch I went over to the occupational health room to get my "makeup" done and receive my script for what type of victim I was to be. Luckily I have the enthusiasm and assertiveness to ask for a "better" script when I was handed the "smoke-inhalation" patient. Boring! I wanted to use the services of the makeup artist that was working on someone else! :-) I happily accepted "burn" victim. Diligently slopping on the cold cream so that the greasy makeup they were going to apply wouldn't stick - I walked over, rolled up my sleeve and had them put on my burned skin makeup. Lol - I should have put more thought into which arm to give them to do up. :-) I'm not ambidextrous. Because there were more complex victims to attend to - the makeup artist let me do my own face. I was to "look pale" from loss of blood. I only had one good arm to use so after I finished smearing my face with paint then picked up a mirror to check out my work-of-blind-art. A clown was looking back at me. :-) Laughing I went over to the makeup station and begged for help. One of the ERT guys helped me look less Bozo and more bloodless.
Done with makeup - one of the ERT people walked some of us up to the floors that we were to be stranded on. My script said I had an electrical burn to my arm and that I was in a kitchen at time of the disaster. :-) Happy to ablige - I went looking for an empty lunch room to hang out in till the start of the drill. I plopped myself down on the ground and read the short script, diligently memorizing my symptoms and responses that I'm suppose to give to the respondent when they found me. I heard the alarm bells go off and the announcements on the PA system. Seconds turned into minutes...many more bells and announcements...then it was well over an hour and I was getting bored. The battery on my camera had died so I was sitting on the cold kitchen floor waiting for a hero to rescue me. The make up on my arm had long dried up and I was starting to pick at out of sheer boredom. All of a sudden someone walks into the kitchen - it's an employee that's come there to microwave their lunch. The drill was over! Wait a minute...I wasn't suppose to die in this drill. What the?!???
I went to the post-incident briefing and got to hear the feedback from the ERT members. I was disappointed that no one found me. I wasn't hiding in the corner of the building - I was in the lunch room! The drill had been chaotic actually and part of me was happy to have NOT been found and dragged out into the miserable rain to be assessed by Triage. Some of the scenerios got out of control and the Site Commander didn't have control of the situation. This resulted in hundreds of people standing outside, getting wet and waiting for instructions. Needless to say the debriefing was full of complaints from every chain of command. On an aside - I was one of 2 casualties that never got rescued. Lol - it was kinda comforting to know that someone else got left behind too. Well - there goes my 5 mins of fame! It only goes to show that our ERT team has to make some drastic changes to improve the process in the event of a real catastrophe.
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