Triage by Firemen...

So. Yesterday I went to a "major incident" exercise at an airport in Essex. I got into it being a member of the British Red Cross, big perk.
To begin with, we all met up in a building, and were introduced to everybody. The chief fire officer for the Airport gave us a safety briefing, and off we drove to the "crash site". The simulation was supposed to be a German plane that had crashed coming out of the airport, so of course we expected to see a disused aircraft sitting on the tarmac. So when we drove up to a field with a bus in it, I was a little bit disappointed. The bus was supposed to be the fuselage of the plane, and strewn around it for about 100 meters were various bits of real plane, to add some sort of realism. Add to this two stinking great holes, and the thing was set. I was an uninjured casualty. I, along with others from my centre, were told to get into the woods and hide. We proceeded to do so, and waited for about half an hour. Then the firemen poured quite a lot of paraffin into the holes, and used a blowtorch on the fuel. Big fire. Good I thought, its getting interesting.

Next three toots on an airhorn and we were off. I positioned myself near the fence in the wood, to get a good view. Since this was a real exercise, the fire brigade had to come from the airport fire station, a good two miles away. But, sure enough 5 minutes later two hulking great crash tenders turn up and drive into the field, accompanied by the officer's land rover and some other engines. Things continued in this fashion, with various ambulances, fire and police vehicles attending. Curiously I counted at least 6 St. John Crusaders. At this point there looked to be more officers than staff, so I began to wonder in the wood.......


.........twenty-five thorn bushes later I give up, and sat by a tree. And here I sat for the next half hour, playing with my new phone, until some fireman had the audacity to rescue me! Man-handled back through the bushes, I was thrown out of the woods and another fireman places a "priority 3" plastic wallet onto my wrist. I was slightly curious how he could triage me..

More waiting. Except this time in a field. People were getting bored, so started pretending to faint to annoy the various emergency personalle. At this point I was about ready to eat my own hand with boredom, so was reasonably pleased when the bus came to take us to the "survivor reception centre". This trip was interesting, all the way through the airport, without a passport check. Or a bag check. I dread to think what would have happened if one of us had a bomb.

Next we were hoarded into a terminal, and greeted by staff who seemed genuinely surprised to see us. We then waited there for a good three hours, before going to the car and me struggling to drive home without falling asleep. Turns out the staff didn't know about it, and thought they were there for overtime. The moral? Never work in an airport.