Preparedness

Day 2 of the Emergency Response Team (ERT) conference and today we did a full scale mass casualty drill in the afternoon. It was interesting to see how the newly trained ERTs responded to the situations with which they were confronted. 

I've some experience with those scenarios from my prior job (I was on the emergency management team) during which we did all sorts of drills for natural or man-made catastrophes. It's fascinating how quickly people get pulled into scenarios which they know are made up and how they react: some live up to the task; others falter -- and it's not always those whom you expect to do so. But the point is to make the unpredictable predictable so that when it happens people are not completely taken aback.

One of the interesting parts for me was to photograph the make up ("moulage") session of the 'victims': the realism achieved was quite impressive (see the extras for a session in progress and a victim with a 'severed' leg). The make-up people are quite the artists and very skillful.