The Metro Technology Center in Oklahoma City holds a mass casualty exercise for their health careers students with the participation of high school students across the metro annually. This year however, they had some assistance from volunteers from Tinker Air Force Base.
“We brought roughly 70 volunteers from the 552nd [Air Control Wing], 72nd Air Base Wing, 349th [Recruiting Squadron], Navy and the reserve unit,” said Tech Sgt. Hugo Perez, Air Force recruiter. “They’re going to be part of the exercise as casualties and along with that they’re going to be evaluating lessons learned and debrief the committee to let them know what aspects they should work on.”
The goal of the exercise is to simulate a mass casualty situation to ensure that Metro Tech and high school students are prepared in the event that an active shooter situation becomes a reality. The exercise took place in two of the health careers buildings on the Metro Tech campus and involved role playing scenarios.
This year, about 400 students from around the Oklahoma City and Stillwater area came together to participate in the exercise.
“We started this as just a hospital day,” said Josie Scott, Metro Tech Health Careers Center Simulation Lab coordinator. “We’d turn our building into a hospital for all of our people to practice running hospital units, surgery, X-Ray since about 2006. About six years ago, with all of the emergency preparedness that’s unfortunately going on, we decided to add that mass casualty component.”
For this mass casualty component, Metro Tech students trained with EMSA, the OKC Police Department, the OKC Fire Department, Air Force personnel and Army National Guard personnel to conduct these drills and teach advanced emergency protocol.
“This gives our students the best real world experience that we can give them about what happens in a mass casualty, because you don’t want the first time to come across this to be in the real world,” Scott said. “They’re going to be panicked and things can slide. Patients will be hurt if they’re not on their game and we want to give them this experience of what it’s like if you’re working in the hospital and what you can expect.”
Scott says teaming up with the Air Force this year gives the exercise an extra level of reality.
“With the Air Force patients coming on board, they can act out the gunshots and wounds so the students get a more real-life experience,” Scott said.
Perez said Tinker also finds benefit in assisting the local community with their exercise.
“It’s helpful in two ways. The first is the marketing and recruiting aspect, because all high school students from across Oklahoma City, Midwest City and Del City are coming here, so they get to see our marketing assets and the Tinker Airmen are here,” Perez said. “The second part is community involvement. It helps enhance their readiness for emergency situations later on.”