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Wednesday, July 16, 2003

By Alisha Hipwell

If you've never tasted fake blood before, I'm happy to tell you it has a zesty mint flavor. I know this because it said so right on the bottle of it in a tackle box filled with what looked like horror movie makeup.

It's also sticky. And harder to remove than you might imagine.

	Related article Training to meet tragedy

I know this because Vern Smith, director of emergency medical services and police training for Butler County Community College, had me change into hospital scrubs before getting the stuff poured all over me.

Did I want to do this?

I'd already been out on a "remote assessment" drill with emergency workers, learning to handle sniper attacks, Columbine-style shootings, terrorist acts and hostage standoffs. Should I take the next step and be a "victim" for them to rescue?

The scenario was this: a newspaper reporter had infiltrated a high school gang, but a planned interview in the woods had turned into carnage. I was to be part of the carnage.

Why not?

So Smith began to rummage in the tackle box for the right deathly makeup shades to transform me from a reasonably healthy thirtysomething to a "Night of the Living Dead" extra.

A second box was filled with various horrific injuries crafted in rubber -- like an eyeball hanging loose from its socket.

Turns out there's a lovely French word for these hideous props: moulage.

Smith applied a rubber gunshot wound to my right temple, then decided to give me an abdominal wound as well. Intestines spilled from a gash in a strap-on rubber belly.

Just when I though I was done, Don Heath, instructor for Tactical Element, the company that offered the course, came over stirring a Styrofoam coffee cup filled with "blood."

"When the team makes contact with you, I want you to take a big gulp of this and bubble it out of your mouth," he said.

Um, sorry, but no. I'm a good sport, but that turned my stomach, zesty mint flavor or not.

That sickening moment aside, it was impossible in the bright, safe classroom, not to indulge in juvenile humor. I played with some other injuries -- a blackened foot and a severed arm -- and photographer Bob Donaldson snapped photos I suspect will end up on a bulletin board in the Post-Gazette's Cranberry office.

Then it was time to march off to the "crime scene."

We hiked a muddy trail that headed into the woods at the edge of the community college campus, walking through puddles, over fallen limbs, rocks, even a sand pile.

We were positioned in various places deep in the woods; I was told to lie on my back in a clearing, one hand holding my guts and my head turned to the side to reveal the gunshot wound.

Smith poured fake blood on my wounds. It dripped into my right eye and ran through my hair. It soaked through the hospital scrubs and my street clothes.

Then we waited. And waited. And waited.

By then it was well past 11 p.m. I was cold and wet and sticky. The mosquitoes whined in my ears. I was tempted to whine myself.

But aside from the bugs, the night was peaceful. It suddenly seemed unreal that all this training for mayhem was necessary.

Of course, no one ever thinks the worst will happen where they live -- but it always happens somewhere. The morning Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold took an arsenal to Columbine High School, most of their fellow students had left the bus thinking they'd be yawning their way through another school day.

Meanwhile, I had almost convinced myself nothing was going happen when everything happened. Flares went up. Dark figures swooped in from the woods and surrounded me. I was peppered with questions. Where did it hurt? Could I talk? What day was it?

There was no more joking in the dark. The students treated the simulation like the real deal.

A paramedic's sure hands took my pulse and felt up and down my extremities for other injuries. "Hundred mile an hour" tape -- similar to electrical tape -- temporarily sealed my abdominal wound. I caught snatches of conversation about my condition and the security of the area.

Then I was strapped into a flexible plastic litter and three team members lifted me and started the long walk through the woods back to base. One end of the litter tilted precariously to the ground and the bottom bumped across rocks and logs.

Later, some paramedics and I began talking about how they handle the real blood and gore.

All of them said they generally stay emotionally detached, no matter how gruesome the task. To prove the point, they proceeded to regale me with stories of the awful accident scenes they have worked.

I told them I could never handle it, but several insisted training is the key.

I was quietly skeptical. I couldn't even drink the fake blood. This clearly is not a job for everyone, regardless of training.

It was nearly 1 a.m. when I climbed into my car for the 40-minute drive home. I kept my fingers crossed and my normally lead foot light on the gas; I couldn't imagine how I would explain my bloody self if I got pulled over.

As I drove, I decided the students and I were both right. It is neither aptitude nor training alone that makes a person good at a job, but a combination of the two.

Then I remembered that Smith told me many trainees use vacation time to take the course.

That reminded me of a third ingredient, the sole province of those who are the best in their fields.

It's dedication.

And in a world where the most horrific events can happen literally out of a clear blue sky, it's a comfort to know the folks charged with saving us have it in spades.

Alisha Hipwell is a freelance writer.