Mock bus accident serves as a teaching moment for community

At exactly 1000 hours it began. A bus had been tipped on its side with a number of kids trapped inside, their injuries and condition unknown. Like clockwork, members of the Granton, Loyal, Neillsville and Pittsville fire departments began their work to get inside the bus while members of the same towns’ EMS crews waited in the wings to begin treating victims.

It's an accident they hope will never happen. But it is an accident they would be foolish not to prepare for. And so they trained together on a crisp and clear Saturday morning, gaining valuable experience for their newest and youngest while members of the community looked on and learned the value of what these departments bring to the area.

While each of the local fire and EMS departments holds regular practices to hone their skills, and even has their own -- albeit on a much smaller scale -- mock accidents, it has been years since any of them have had the opportunity to practice on a school bus. The last time anyone could recall holding such a training was about a decade ago, and a lot has changed in that time.

“It is not often that we are able to work on that (a bus)” said Simon Fischer, the fire chief of the Chili-Fremont Fire Department. During the mock accident, he served as a narrator of the events to the observers in attendance, letting them know what was going on at the scene. “Most departments can get a hold of a car, at Chili we try to practice on a car two times per year, but a bus is much harder to get,” Fischer said. “Car accidents, most of us see that regularly, but a bus is a whole new ball game.”

The bus itself was purchased for $1 from the Granton School District last fall. Pat Wolf, president of the EMS team in Granton, helped to organize the purchase and has spent the past several months getting the pieces together to make the training happen for as many local firemen and EMS personnel as he could.

“We were looking at doing a mock accident and we had gotten a spare school bus, we would like to thank the (Granton School) district for that,” he said. “We see a lot of stuff at the EMS and we wanted to make sure everybody got this opportunity to work on a bus. It took a lot to make this happen, and everybody had roles to play.”

Fischer explained the process that was needed to get to the victims trapped inside the tipped school bus.

“What you have to do in a bus is gain rear access from the back and front access through the windshield and open up the roof,” he said. “We need to make access points for them (the firemen and EMTs) to get inside the bus.”

Using their cutting tools and JAWS equipment, the firemen cut man-sized holes into the top of the bus at the front and back ends to gain access to the victims trapped inside. While it seems simple enough, Fischer said there is a specific reason why a bus needs to be approached in such a manner.

“People don’t tend to realize that there is a certain way that you have to cut a bus,” he said. “On top where the rivets go, those areas are steel reinforced and the black lines on the sides of the bus are also reinforced. You can’t cut through those. So they have to learn how to cut a bus ... some of our newer guys have never cut on a bus. They learn where to cut and how to cut it and gain the experience so when the time comes they know what they are doing.”

Once inside the bus, the process began to remove victims and begin treatment. In situations like this with multiple victims, the EMTs practice triage, where patients are treated based on the severity of their injuries until the ambulance arrives. Like the firemen with the bus, the EMTs at the training did not often get the opportunity to practice triage and mass casualty events, so Saturday’s training provided them with valuable experience “It is not often we get the chance to practice triage, so it is nice to get the opportunity,” said Janell Walter, vice president of the Granton EMS.

Helping the EMTs in their task were about 30 student volunteers of varying ages from the Granton, Loyal and Neillsville school districts. Before the training began, each student was given their own instructions, telling them what their injury during the training would be, and if they would have anything special to be doing to make the scene more realistic. The acting done by the students, Walter said, was very well done.

“We had 30 students and about 40 patients in all,” she said. “We had someone come in from Marshfield to do all the makeup on the students and it looked amazing. The kids did an amazing job acting and doing their parts. If there was a kid that was told beforehand that he needed to get up and start running around, they would do it. They did a great job.”

While some of the details included in the training dealt with usual scenarios EMTs and firemen were expected to see at an accident scene -- such as dealing with distraught parents -- Walter said there were a few other things that were included based on new things they have seen in the community. Some of the patients were diabetic, for example, or spoke only Spanish. They had to find ways to accommodate.

“We had come up with that,” she said. “We have those things here, people speak Spanish, and sometimes they don’t know English. I remember driving bus and one of the kids was trying to speak to me, but she only spoke Spanish. I couldn’t understand her, and we need to be prepared for that and include it in the training.”

Besides gaining new experience, the firemen and EMS personnel agreed that one of the most important things to come out of the training was the experience of working together with the other local departments. Cohesion is needed to make sure accidents get resolved without a hitch, and practices like the one on Saturday allowed the teams to work together in a way they don’t often get the chance to.

“We work with the surrounding departments all the time and we would be working with them at an event like this,” said Gary Eibergen, the Granton fire chief who also served as the head of incident control during the

For when the day comes... we will be ready

Firemen and EMTs from local crews work together to stabilize a ‘victim’ during a mock mass casualty traffic accident training event held the morning of April 9 at the Granton Fire Station. The emergency teams from Granton, Chili, Loyal, Neillsville and Pittsville, as well as Life Link Air, all participated in the training, which involved a school bus and multiple cars and students from the Granton, Loyal and Neillsville school districts posing as victims. For more photos of the training event, please see page 12.

CHEYENNE THOMAS/STAFF PHOTO

training. “It is good to be able to keep that communication between everybody.”

The ability to work with other fire departments and EMTs is something that is becoming increasingly important for the local volunteer crews. These days, they said it is getting harder and harder to find people willing to volunteer to be a fireman or EMT. Without volunteers, Wolf said locals will have to start relying on emergency responders from farther and farther away, which could be the difference between having a home and losing it or -- like Saturday’s training showed -- the difference between life and death.

“We’re running low on people to fill positions,” he said. “If this kind of an accident happened in the middle of the day not a lot of people would be showing up. We would have to call in a lot of different departments because we wouldn’t have the numbers to treat everybody. We need EMS and firemen. A lot of the guys on our department are getting old and looking to retire. We don’t have anybody to replace them unfortunately. I hope the community will look at this training and find a reason to want to help. We do a lot of stuff for this community and we want the community to be more aware of it.”

The scene was a busy one at the mock mass casualty traffic accident training held on April 9. The local fire and EMS departments spent more than two hours that day removing victims from the tipped school bus and other vehicles as part of their training exercise. Above, members of the crews carry a young child out to the triage station to begin further treatment while at above left, a pair of EMTs assess a victim’s injuries. During the training, the emergency responders had to work around certain difficulties with the patients that they would likely encounter in the field. At below middle, a fireman listens to a bystander who was helping to translate the Spanish spoken by one of the victims. At below right, a fireman tries to deal with a distraught parent at the scene.

Not everybody got a happy ending at the training. Above, a group of firemen carry out one of the deceased victims of the accident.

CHEYENNE THOMAS/ STAFF PHOTOS