Peter Haydon
Greater Bendigo, two hours drive north of Melbourne, is a bustling rural centre, home to about 100,000 people. As a rural population in the harsh Australian bush, the people of Bendigo are familiar with natural disasters, and have many community mechanisms, including a strong Red Cross Branch, to assist when disasters like flood and bushfire strike.
In order to train and prepare Red Cross first aid volunteers for difficult scenarios involving mass casualties, the Australian Red Cross undertakes ‘mock’ disasters, including natural disasters like bushfires, or man-made disasters like bomb blasts.
Honing life saving skills
Brett Fraser, Operations Officer in Emergency First Aid with the Australian Red Cross, put together exactly such a scenario on 16 and 17 April 2005. During the mock emergency, some 30 high school students posed as victims of a schoolyard explosion so Red Cross First Aid volunteers could hone their life saving skills.
The large-scale training exercise was designed to teach volunteers to prioritise casualties when responding to a variety of potential emergencies including explosions and chemical leaks.
“We dressed the students up to look like real bombing victims,” Fraser says. “Some of the students were instructed to ‘play dead’, but the majority were acting as if they had a variety of serious trauma injuries – like spinal injuries, burns, serious lacerations and broken bones. We tried to make it look as realistic as possible.”
Four Red Cross vehicles, containing 23 trained Red Cross volunteers responded to the scenario. Racing to the school they were greeted with a scene of utter chaos. Bodies were strewn across the playground, on rooftops, or trapped in stairwells.
“As they were trained to do, the first aid volunteers fanned out to find the affected people,” Fraser says. “We’d instructed the blast victims to act as if they were in as much pain as they would have been if the scenario had been real. They did a magnificent job. I can tell you, some of the screaming was bloodcurdling.”
Logic and reasoning
The first aid volunteers had their logic and reasoning strongly tested by the scenario. Not only did they have to locate the ‘patients’, they had to perform triage (prioritise those in greatest need), work out the safest way to move the injured and rapidly ferry them to a pre-determined ambulance loading bay.
All of this was done under real pressure, with volunteers instructed to not only be mindful of the safety of their patients, but their own safety too.
Brett Fraser says he is looking forward to making the exercises an annual event: “Both the ‘victims’ and the volunteers loved it,” he says. “A lot of our first aid volunteers are used to a monitoring role at community events, so to get involved in a more serious scenario, even if it was only make-believe, was a real challenge.”
“Everyone was exhausted by the end of the weekend, but they were really keen to do it again soon. If we can maintain our enthusiasm and our skills, I’m sure we’ll be able to respond successfully to the real thing,” Fraser concludes.
Every year the Australian Red Cross provides first aid training to in excess of 100,000 people.