Blood, gore overwhelm Teen CERT
Senior Kim Braesch lies motionless as she pretends to be unconscious from the staged bus accident.
May 22, 2009 • written by Brittany Davila, 08-09 Assistant Editor
Filed under News, Top stories
Screams and wails stream through the parking lot as the Teen CERT students flock onto the scene. Blood and gore penetrate their vision as they step onto the bus loaded with severely wounded drama students.
The drama department was involved in North Dakota’s first Teen Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) certification. Teen CERT trains students to be prepared for light search and rescue responses, fire safety and medical disaster operations. Part of their certification requires them to be involved in a disaster rescue simulation.
“It was a pretty cool experience, and it showed us a lot about how a real disaster would feel like,” sophomore Teen CERT member Jeffrey Keller said. “It was kind of crazy because it was so realistic.”
Junior Caitlin Leick is a member of the drama department and participated in the simulation. She was unconscious during the simulation with extensive bruising and burns.
“After a while you feel like its real,” Leick said. “I was unconscious and [junior] Solveig [Swanson], my best friend, was over me crying and screaming and it was really scary.”
Among the injured was a collection of students, such as senior Andrew Lenzmier, who was pronounced dead on the scene. His face was completely bruised with a shard of glass protruding from his chest.
“Everything I experienced was what I heard since I was dead,” Lenzmier said. “Everyone around me was freaking out and several people started bawling and screaming when they saw I was dead.”
There were more than 50 drama students involved with the disaster simulation with varying degrees of injury.
“I think we really overwhelmed the Teen CERT kids because of how realistic we were,” Lenzmier said.
Keller thinks the simulation was extremely valuable for his education in and out of the classroom.
“It was a lot of work to carry people, and that taught us a lot about how hard it would be in a real disaster,” he said.
Leick appreciates being able to be a part of the first North Dakota Teen CERT simulation and was overwhelmed by how real it became.
“I was thinking a lot of how real it was and what would happen if it actually happened to us,” she said. “The Teen CERT kids are really the future rescue people and they could possibly be really saving me one day.”
Senior Jordan Shive holds a pained expression on his face as a mixture of corn syrup, laundry detergent and food coloring, taking the place of blood, streams down his head.
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