Preparedness Exercise

On Sepember 20th, I participated in the airport's annual crash exercise. Airports' are required to have the preparedness exercises so that everyone that has a role knows their role should anything happen. It's a full scale exercise, with volunteers for passengers, family/friends greeters, the response teams from the Airport and surrounding mutual aid. Make-up artist to give people realistic wounds. The whole nine-yards.

When you sign up for the exercise as a volunteer, you get to chose whether you want to be a passsenger or a family/friend greeter. Being my first time, I figured why not be a passenger. I was chosen to be an uninjured survivor.

All passenger volunteers had to report in at 6am (6am!!!) for make-up but knowing that I was uninjured, I was told that it was OK for me to arrive a little later - 7:30am. A local high school helps out with the exercise by providing a bus full of students to play passengers. When I arrived, I saw people walking about with their make-up. It wasn't just make-up color, it had texture - very gory looking stuff.

The one thing that does not get exercised is the actual crashing of any planes. We just board the plane and wait till someone tells us to put our heads down and grab our ankles. As I was climbing the stairs to go into the plane, I noticed a kid in front of me had something sticking out of his ankle - it looked like bone - his bone - it really looked like his bone was sticking out of his skin - made me want to get sick. The plane was an old one used just for this purpose and quite small, especially considering all the teenagers on-board - at some point I was wondering what I was thinking signing up to be on a plane full of kids. But once the exercise started everything moved quickly. We were told if we were not simulating being injured we should walk off the plane - the folks that were simulating injured people stayed behind. About 3o of us walked off the plane and stood to the side on the field - we were out just in time to see the fire trucks arriving with their water guns blazing - it was a site. Shortly after that other fire engines - mutual aid - started arriving. In a real life scenario, the airport fire fighters would be fighting the fire and the others would help with rescue and treatment.

As we were standing by watching, ambulances started to arrive to simulate their roles. There was so much going on - it was hard to decide what to watch. The doctor from the clinic came to check in on the un-injured. The firemen came around to check on us and sort us by injuries - greens were OK to go, yellows needed treatment and red needed immediate treatment. The greens (including me) were loaded onto a bus and we were waiting there. A couple of the firemen (one very cute one) came to check in on us and so did volunteers from the Red Cross - all playing their roles very well.

Sitting on the bus, we could watch the "injured" being wheeled to the triage area and get sorted and treated. We saw ambulances taking people to the mock hospital and someone even got air lifted in a helicopter. Eventually the bus took us to the terminal to be reunited with our friends/friendly. As I was entering the waiting room, I was given a sheet of paper telling me who would be meeting me - an Armit Upadhay - never heard of him. I was greeted by a Red Cross volunteer who asked how I was and if I needed anything and then escorted to a seat where a Chaplain from a nearby city was going to aske me a few questions. All these years at the airport and I had no idea the extent of community involvement in such scenarios. The chaplain asked me if I was alright, if I needed anything and then filled out a form to help me get reunited. I had no trouble with my questions but was a little lost at on the greeter part since all I had was a name - I made up the rest and then went and took a seat. The other volunteers did the same.

In another part of the airport, volunteers playing family and friends were arriving to meet this plane and they had to eventually find out what had happened and try to get information on their end.

The exercise ended 2 hours after it had started. Some of the people had been reunited. A few minutes after the exercise, long time buddy Mark comes over and askes why I hadn't come looking for him, I told him I had no idea he was supposed to be Armit. Turns out all I had was a made-up name and he had a whole bio on me and my so called trip around the world.

Afterwards, all the volunteers met up for lunch - got to chat with Armit and a few of the other visitors. Got to hear all the comments from all the players. A very educational experience and I will be sure to participate again.

So what's next - Fleet week and the Blue Angels this week. Umm - isn't this supposed to be work?