Attendees get emergency experience at annual fair

PALMER — “I think one of them is dead!” the girl says as she leads would-be rescuers to the scene of the accident.

Three people are laid out and one walking. A boy with a leg injury is screaming in pain, two girls are unconscious.

“Can you hear me?” someone asks.

Eventually the people — who all just happened on the scene of this ATV crash 12 miles down Knik-Goose Bay Road — are put to work holding one victim’s head in place and putting a makeshift splint on another.

At some point Sparky the Fire Dog — the mascot, as in guy-in-a-suit-mascot of the Mat-Su Borough Department of Emergency Services — showed up and was put to work helping. And if it isn’t clear by now, this was a simulation.

The simulation was part of this year’s Emergency Expo, the fifth installment of that annual event. Booths lining the halls of Mat-Su College included everything from insurance agents to avalanche trainers to emergency trailers. There was a fire extinguisher simulator, amateur radio operators in the parking lot and even a shaking trailer that simulates an 8.0 earthquake.

Back to the ATV wreck: why do you need to make sure a victim’s head is in the right position? Well, it makes sure blood flow isn’t cut off and also it helps the victim feel better.

“He’s going to be in a tremendous amount of pain and you want to reduce that,” said Andy Romano, CEO of the North American Outdoor Institute and one of two people leading the simulation.

Dorothy Adler, the other leader, asked how everyone was feeling.

“It’s probably normal to feel pretty scared,” she said, before letting attendees know about trainings later in the day.

The plan was to simulate three disasters that day; the ATV wreck, a boating accident — complete with a canoe to use as a prop — and an avalanche.

As they walked out, the Johnson family said that the kind of first aid training that can make you of use in that sort of situation is valuable. Both Alex Johnson and his sister Autumn have had wilderness first aid training.

“They do a lot of snowmobiling, six-wheeling, four-wheeling. If it’s outside they’re doing it,” said mother Darlene Johnson. “They’re growing up here, they need these skills.”

So what was that Alex, 14, was doing with the injured boy in the corner? “C-spine,” Alex replied.

“It’s where you hold their heads so they don’t move it,” said Autumn, 12.

So, do the kids think this kind of training is useful?

“Oh, definitely,” Alex said.

NAOI Executive Director Debra McGhan said she also thinks it’s useful. The inspiration for the disaster simulations comes from a pretty traumatic summer she had.

“One summer I was first on scene three times,” she said.

These were just incidents she happened upon. She isn’t a medic, wasn’t responding on an ambulance. One involved two girls on an ATV that T-boned a car. Both needed some pretty immediate medical attention.

“I had no clue what to do and it was horrifying,” she said.

McGhan said she thought afterwards that maybe people should have some kind of experience with that.

“Let’s give people the chance to go through what I went through without the trauma,” she said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.