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| Coordinator, Colleen Danaher (EMT-I) gives last minute instructions to the student actors before the demonstration begins. |
In the most recent of what Essex Rescue hopes to make a bi-annual event, Colleen Danaher and Judy Breitmeyer, of Essex Rescue and Mount Mansfield Union High school respectively, directed a massive Mock Crash on the lawn of MMU. A drill for rescue workers and a wake-up call to high school students, the drill featured student and faculty actors, rescue personnel and equipment from Essex Rescue and Underhill-Jericho FD, and two very realistically smashed cars. Crew Captain, Brian Longe made the students as realistically mangled as the cars with the Essex Rescue "moulage" kit - a collection of make-up geared toward the gory.
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| Brian Longe (EMT-I) adds fake blood to make the scene perfectly realistic. |
While the injuries were fake, the equipment was real, and rescuers had to be as careful as they would on a real scene to avoid injury to students and volunteers alike. For Essex Rescue, it was an excellent opportunity to practice skills that personnel hope they rarely have to use - the extrication and care of critical patients following a Motor Vehicle Crash - also called a 10-50 or MVC.
Professionals were on hand to provide newspaper, television and even documentary coverage. The following article was printed in the Burlington Free Press on April 30th - the day after the dramatization (article provided courtesy of the Burlington Free Press and journalist, Molly Walsh)
Getting the message - 'Crash' planners hope this is the only prom drama
by Molly Walsh - Free Press Staff Writer
JERICHO - Britney Rhoads staggered out of the driver's seat of the crumpled station wagon, dropped a beer bottle and walked over to a body lying on the ground, apparently thrown from a sedan that lay smashed against the wagon.
Rhoads, a 17-year-old junior at Mount Mansfield Union High School, looked down at the still form and urged the boy to wake up. The wail of emergency vehicle sirens grew louder and the body stayed motionless. Rhoads screamed out in a slurred, hysterical voice: "I didn't do anything."
The car accident Rhoads starred in Friday morning wasn't real and she wasn't drunk. Rhoads and four other Mount Mansfield students were actors in a mock crash staged on the front lawn of the school to dramatize the dangers of drinking and driving the day before their high school junior-senior prom.
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| EMS Command, Peggy McCabe (EMT-B), plots the extrication with the fire department. |
The scene was pure fiction, but it was realistic fiction. Several hundred students watched the dramatization, most with somber faces and several with tears, as real emergency workers used the Jaws of Life tool to enter the crumpled cars and extract the student-actors posing as the injured. When teacher and adviser Laurel Butler came running onto the scene, portraying the grieving mother of the dead boy on the ground, her sobs were so wrenching that some students had to look away.
Nick Bartlett, a 16-year-old sophomore from Underhill, said the mock crash sent a good lesson. "Life is reality and bad things can happen."
Watching Butler wail over the body of the student actor crash victim was sad, Bartlett said. "I was picturing what my mom would do if something like that happened to me. ...I think she would be, like, lost."
The Mount Mansfield prom - set for the Wyndham Burlington tonight - is an early entry in a spring prom season that peaks the last weekend in May. As the celebrations arrive, so do worries about drinking and driving at social events related to proms and the graduation ceremonies that follow in June. Police and school substance-abuse counselors often gear up prevention education at this time of year, hoping to forestall unerage drinking that might turn deadly.
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| Sean Collins (EMT-I) narrates the extrication and patient care for the hundreds of student observers. |
Judy Breitmeyer, substance-abuse prevention counselor at MMU, was the director of Friday's mock crash. Along with the formal wear, flowers and keepsake snapshots, proms bring risks for students, she said.
"They're dressed up and they are doing other adult things and they may make some bad decisions about alcohol or drugs that night," she said. A mock crash is a powerful way to make a simple point. "It's just to really remind them: Think before you act."Stricter laws and more vigorous enforcement have helped reduce alcohol-related auto fatalities in Vermont, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration figures indicate. In 1982, Vermont recorded 107 motor vehicle fatalities with 65 percent alcohol-related. In 2003, there were 69 fatalities with 41 percent - or 29 deaths - alcohol-related. Last year the total number of auto fatalities jumped to 97 in Vermont.
Many teens drink- before the state's legal age of 21 despite a concerted campaign by law enforcement officers and public health officials to keep the beer at bay. Vermont Health Department Youth Risk Behavior Surveys indicate that almost half of all high school students - 44 percent - say they drink. Police around the state launch dozens of patrols annually in an effort to shut down illegal parties where the booze flows. Statewide, police ticketed 3,923 youths for underage drinking or possession of alcohol in 2004.
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| A state trooper interviews Britney Rhoads of MMU. |
Mount Mansfield Union sponsored a number of activities to discourage underage drinking and substance use this week. A parents forum called "Not My Kid" took place, and the school created a memory tree on a bulletin board in the front hall where students and faculty could post leaves with the names of people they knew who had been killed in alcohol-related incidents.
Rhoads strongly believes in the sobriety message. Drinking and drugs are risky not only because of the potential for crashes, she said. They also make girls vulnerable to people who might commit sexual assault.
"If you're plastered, passed out on the floor - they can take advantage of you," she said. "Why would you put yourself in that position?"
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| Mike Weinberg (EMT-I) and James Yeaton (EMT-B) perform CPR on a "pulseless" student |
Rhoads and her boyfriend will not go to any parties after the prom and she'll do the driving. "The only person you can control is yourself," she said. "Why put yourself in someone else's hands on one of the best nights of your life?"
Sixteen MMU students including Chris Bowen donned white makeup Friday and took a vow of silence in a memorial to the number of people typically killed in drunken-driving accidents every eight hours in the United States. The whiteout was one way to make a point, but Bowen said personal examples are even more powerful.
"I hope to just lead by example. Some people lecture. What I do is, I don't drink," said Bowen, a 17-year-old junior from Jericho. Someday he wants to be a politician. "I have big dreams. ... Having drinking or drugs on your resume is not a good idea."
Chloe Newschwander, a 15-year-old sophomore from Huntington, also participated in the white-out. "I think that people don't realize what kind of damage drinking can do," she said. "They think they are untouchable." Too many people rely on alcohol as a social lubricant, she added. "A lot of people believe the only way they can enjoy themselves is to be intoxicated."
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| McCabe directs EMTs and firefighters as they remove a patient from the car. |
Chris Perren, 18, a senior from Richmond, played the dead boy lying on the ground. "I volunteered to be dead on arrival," he explained.
He said the mock crash was a reminder for young people to take general precautions when driving. Many students at MMU are still grieving for l7-year-old senior Jason Lowell of Huntington, who was killed in the fall in an accident that police said was the result of drag racing.
"He's still in the back of everybody's mind," Perren said. "I know that was a great lesson for everyone about being cautious when you drive."
Contact Molly Walsh at 660-1874 or mwalsh@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com
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| Medical Advisor, Jackie Goss (PA-C) and President, Karen Danaher (EMT-I), after the drill. |
These types of demonstrations provide students with an upfront look at the consequences of not only drunk driving, but any form of impaired driving - whether it be from alcohol, a cell phone or simply too many distractions in and around a vehicle. The mock crash is another way in which Essex Rescue strives to provide our community with care before an injury as well as after.
Photographs courtesy of Craig Butkus, collage by James Yeaton.