What I did for fun on Friday

I took a vacation day from my Monday thru Friday 8-5 job to go do something "fun". Ok I doubt many readers will think its fun and I decided not to show some of the very realistic pictures.

Almost every year the school works with the Ambulance, Fire Department, Police and other agencies to put together what they call a docudrama. Its a mock vehicle wreck that they have the highschoolers watch usually before prom and graduation. Its to get kids to think twice about drinking and driving or riding in a car with someone who has been drinking. Also about the dangers of popping pills and driving. They have been doing this since I was in highschool there back in 2001. I decided it would be fun to go to my second job and partake in this event.

They get wrecked cars pile them up together and it looks realistic we also get students from school and put fake blood and make up on them to make them look like they are really hurt. And yes I will spare pictures but if you search facebook for St. James Ambulance District you can see 200+ pictures from the day. We had kids with sticks stuck out of them girls that looked like they had glass embedded in them. Anyway I was nervous there would be tons of cameras and video cameras not to mention students watching us work. I had a slight disadvantage as I was the only one with the ambulance crew that hadn't done one of these on the EMT side.

Anyway we spent time getting the kids ready and our mock scene all set up and off we went. I pulled some pictures off Facebook and tried to make sure they were ones that weren't gory looking but still showed what I do for my second job.

Can't seem me but I am next to the van at the end of the stretcher you can see my legs. The van was where our crews patients were. Now on a real wreck you are going a million directions and its chaotic at times. But for this we had all planned which vehicle we would assist and which patients we would end up with.

We ran thru the scenario twice since to get all the upper class students out there.
They had "family" of the kids being upset and having to be restrained by cops. Showed cops putting a couple of the kids in the cop car for driving under the influence.

We were taking one of our patients to our ambulance yes I am almost at a run my medic partner was way taller and long legged but I kept up with him.

This was from the second go round. They were going to show the students about having to use the jaws of life to get the door open to get the girl out. I had no clue that there was a camera taking pictures. Yes I am looking at  the camera but not sure when or how he snapped it.... I guess I should have known since last year in the extrication class I was in a ton of pictures and never saw the guy with the camera..
Anyway I was in the van with the girl holding her head steady while we waited for the fire department to use the spreaders to pop open the door. The poor girl was nervous so I told her what they were doing and why. All the while I was secretly wishing I was the one using the spreaders. Yes I am strange but they are cool to use especially when its not a life death situation.

The coroner was even there as we had two kids who were dead. We had the helicopter come in and land and take a patient away. Bet that was the highlight of that kids day he got to take two helicopter rides yes I was slightly jealous.

See the coroner was there but I downloaded this picture to show how darn short I am. You can barely see the top of my head across from him on the left. I guess being short pays off when there are tons of cameras around you get covered up by all the tall people :)

It was a good day I won't go in to the bad and the stress that happened because in the end it came out ok. I hope to get to do this again the next time as well. I think its really beneficial for kids to see their peers "hurt" to make them think before partying and then driving home. I scanned the crowd a couple times and you could see the fear in some of their eyes. Accidents do happen some you can't prevent but there are way to many that can be prevented like drinking and driving popping pills and texting.