The Mass Casualty exercise was very interesting and incredibly educational. Beginning at 7:00 a.m., I helped my friend Louise make fake wounds on approximately 50 people. Some were green patients with minor bumps and bruises (I'm actually pretty good at making fake bruises), some were yellow patients with more serious lacerations (I learned how to do fake lacerations at the very end of the makeup time), and some were red patients who had amputations, severe burns, and other kinds of trauma. Once we finished, Louise did my makeup. I was a red patient with 2nd degree burns over 35% percent of my body. This is what I looked like afterward (I am sure the effect would have been better if I hadn't been smiling, but we were having fun taking pics):

Interestingly enough, the gritty black stuff is used coffee grounds kept on with Vaseline, which apparently simulates charred skin quite well. Who knew?

(Someone suggested I make this my Facebook profile pic. I might do that.)

Around 9:00 a.m. the organizers herded the patients out to the "plane," which was actually an old bus tilted at an angle out in the field. Some of us got into the bus and others scattered on the ground around the bus. We had all been given acting instructions on how we were to behave. Mine was easy—lie on the ground and be unconscious. A couple of large slash piles were set on fire to mimic plane crash conditions.

It took about 45 minutes for the first responders to get to us. I didn't expect that the response would be immediate, because there is a little thing known as "scene safety," and the incident commander doesn't just send rescuers in willy-nilly. However, I was a bit surprised at the way triage and rescue transpired. I am so used to the way that our firefighters train and respond, and I discovered that we are much better at it than a lot of the other county fire departments. I was hastily (and sloppily) strapped to a backboard, almost dumped off the backboard, shoved into one ambulance and taken out again, then left on the ground in a slow drizzle for 15 minutes before being put into another ambulance and taken to the hospital. Hmmm. Well, part of these exercises is to figure out where the holes are.

The husband asked me how the ride to the hospital was. I told him it would have been much better if he hadn't asked me yesterday morning if I thought I would get carsick riding in the ambulance backward. The thought never entered my mind until he mentioned it. Sure enough, I must have been turning an interesting shade of green, because the EMT riding in the ambulance with me asked me if I was okay. I told him I was okay as long as I could lift my head up periodically and look out the back window—not an easy task when one is strapped to a backboard.

Once we got to the hospital we were taken to a trauma room and the doctors ran through the scenarios of what they would do if we were actual patients—complete with actual charts (I read mine). It was all very fascinating. Afterward they treated us to lunch and then took us back to the airport.

And I made the news last night! I taped the ten o'clock news and watched it this morning and sure enough, they got a shot of me lying on the ground looking unconscious.

All in all it was a good way to spend six hours of my day. Then I came home and knitted.