One of the ladies that I work with in CERT(Community Emergency Response Team) recently emailed me asking if I would like to participate in an outside activity to help a company with a disaster scene where we would actually get paid. I would have done it free but getting paid was even better! I got my friend Betty to go with me and we headed to downtown Atlanta at the Marta station where the exercise was to be performed from 10 pm until 7 am.
They flew in some of the nation’s finest trauma makeup applications experts and I got a really nice lady who asked me what injury I wanted. She originally asked me if I wanted my intestines hanging out (which I refused) but I got a really good one with my eye hanging out.
I have to say that I have done disaster simulations many times but this was BY FAR the best one I have ever had personally. I was the center of attention wherever I went that night and constantly had people coming up asking if they could take my picture or if they could take a picture with me.
I know these pictures look gross and realistic, but remember they are just makeup.
Me and Betty
Notice how I don’t lose my appetite in an emergency. LOL
I found a friend in the same boat as me…eyeball hanging out..
These looked really gross….their mouth was blown out.
This was the intestines that I was offered….no thank you!
My friend Michelle kept asking me to itch her hanging skin.
So the whole purpose was two-fold. It was a disaster to test the responses of the first responders of police, fire, MARTA personnel, and other professionals. But we were also filming a training video. They had real explosions and actors (real wrestlers) that were “the bad guys” who planted an explosive device in the MARTA train and pulled a gun on a cop. We knew the situation but the first responders didn’t so it was treated as a real live situation.
I ended up being in a different train than Betty or Michelle but it was still fun. I knew some of the people on my train and got to know the others pretty well. It was our train that held the explosion (which was real). It was loud and we were told NOT to look out the side of the train because it would burn our retinas. We didn’t know exactly when the explosion would take place so it really was kinda scary and easy to “act the part”. Although, I yelled and moaned a LOT, I’m sure I would have been in shock if my eye was really hanging out. And these pictures aren’t even what we really looked like because once we got in position, they came around and dusted us with explosion dust and added lots more fresh blood that was trickling down our bodies.
We ended up doing 2 takes. For whatever reason, the fire department never showed up the first time so I am not sure who were our first responders and carried us out, but I’m guessing it was MARTA people. The second time there were a bunch of fireman who carried us out and triaged us. Honestly, they seemed to be working very slowly but I know they deal with disasters all the time and this was just another call to many of them. I was finally put “in the ambulance” so my act was over.
These are the guys that didn’t make it- poor dummies. Thankfully, all of us others walked out the way we came in. One of the guys that was in the seat in front of me had his leg blown off but he really was an amputee in a wheelchair. Another man had part of his finger missing so that made his injury easy as well.
I had so much fun and was glad to be able to help out in the training session of so many people who would be there to help us out when we really need the help.
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