I’m participating in a triage exercise organized by the local fire department and ambulance companies. The bleacher accident simulates a large emergency scenario where emergency first responders would need to identify and grade the severity of injuries. Those who are unconscious are attended to before those who are conscious. The general rule in triage is, the people who can howl and complain usually are the ones who are in better shape than the ones who aren’t making any noise.
This was just one Thursday night I would spend with the Explorers Club through four years of high school. Explorers Club, essentially a junior firefighter program similar to firefighter programs like this was a mentorship between my local fire department and youth. We volunteered at local events alongside the firefighters, marched in parades and helped raise money for the department. Monthly, the firefighters taught us something cool about their line of work. This includes shooting water from the big hoses, swimming in fire-proof “gumby suits” in the local pond, and learning all the parts of the trucks and riding in them. My favorite was when we hid warm water bottles in the firehouse and crawled along the floor with the new infrared detector to practice saving people from a burning building.
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