FHL Helps Local Emergency Services (EMS) with a Drill
by Pema Kitaeff, FHL Safety Liason
This past May, local EMS conducted an emergency drill in FHL's Lab 2 which was a surprise to most of the responders. Some FHL students and researchers volunteered to stage themselves as victims of an "unknown hazard," and gave our local emergency crews a huge challenge with the number of victims we presented. Three ambulances, one fire truck, and multiple personal vehicles belonging to volunteer Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) responded to the scene. The drill began at 6:40 pm on a Tuesday, and some responders still hadn't realized that it wasn't a real emergency as late as 7:45 pm. Firefighters in full face masks extricated the 'victims' from Lab 2 and most were transported to the Emergency Room in ambulances. Many thanks especially to Drew Mcwhirter, Jack Conroy, Olivia Dietz, Rose Wade, Julia Kobelt, Gabriella Allyn Kurz, Art Woods, and Bernadette Holthuis for volunteering their time. If this biology thing doesn't work out for you, there might be a brilliant acting career in your future! Your donation of time not only contributed to training our local EMTs, you also helped many of them to familiarize themselves with FHL, which could be important for a real emergency here in the future.
Photos by Pema Kitaeff
