All around the pod there are choruses of “I need blood!” and a collaboration of students with their hands, legs, arms and necks doused in fake gooey blood stand around Wendi Butler as she preps them.
It is the sixth year of Foothill’s annual Bioscience Earthquake simulation. The students create a fake earthquake scenario, complete with chairs and desks scattered across the classroom and pod. Split into two different groups, they must either play the victims or the rescuers.
“During Medtech we’ve been learning about First Aid,” said junior Isabelle Muschamp. “This is like a final to end the First Aid section. Then we go into diseases.”
There are three different victim groups groaning and moaning in Butler’s classroom, the E Pod, and the Quad. Three different rescue teams await the call from Butler to begin working to find their victims and rescue everyone on scene.
“It’s testing the abilities of first aid and how we respond under pressures,” said junior Joanna Chavez as more blood is painted on her skin. “I have a broken clavicle, and I’m part of the walking wounded.”
The victims are all painted, and Butler gathers them around her.
“All right, here’s what we’re going to do,” she says, “We’re going to carefully dismantle this room. I want you to spread out. If you’re going to be loud, don’t go next to a classroom.”
Students move around and take their positions. The lights in the classroom turn off. Once Butler sends her rescue teams out, the victims start screaming or crying or making sounds in-between the two.
“Mrs. Butler wanted us to make this as difficult as possible for the other group” said Muschamp. In the middle of the Quad, she screamed and complained of the huge gash on her shin. Students from the rescue team rushed to help her.
All throughout the three different areas students are running to rescue their classmates. Students who haven’t been taken care of plot to make the work difficult for the other groups.
“We should just simultaneously seize,” joked junior Elena Schink as her classmates laughed.
Even though there was a tremendous amount of joking around, the students took this simulation very seriously. The moved students on stretchers called across the room for more bandages and asked serious questions to the victims. The questions were all along the lines of “What is your name?” to “What do you last remember?”
“It’s as real as I can get it.” Butler said. Throughout the simulation, she played the ambulance, running to and fro and wherever she found victims who were “healed.”
“I felt like I was actually in a multi-casualty situation,” said junior Henry Ashworth, a member of the rescue team. “There was a little bit of panic.”
