Mock disaster gives students hands-on training

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (WTHI) - Students across the Wabash Valley learn hands-on life saving skills with the help of a mock disaster.

Thursday Terre Haute's Hulman Field was the scene of a mock disaster simulating a plane crash.

Indiana State University nursing and Ivy Tech paramedic students, along with Task force 7 Mass Casualty Unit and Air National Guard medics joined forces in an effort to give students hands-on training.

First Class Airmen Nikki McCartney, a paramedic with the Air National Guard says, "It helps us out for when we do have real life situations, so doing these scenarios which we try to do them as much as we can; its much better than being in a classroom."

Emergency responders dragged victims from the place crash into a triage center set up inside an airport hanger.

Inside the hanger, that’s where students learned how to save lives and even deal with victims on an emotional level like losing a child.

Sheila Rice, an Ivy Tech paramedic student says, "It turned out to be a lot harder than I realized it was going to be because I'm actually pregnant. So I got a little too involved but it's actually a really good thing for us to learn because I don't think I would have been able to deal with a mother who lost her kid. "

Barry Nicoson, Ivy Tech Program Director of Paramedic Science says, "It has a little bit of perspective of what they can see out there and it puts them in the ability to treat it as they see it. It's different in real life but this is as life like as we can make it for them and that's the best way to learn."

Thursday’s mock disaster was the first of its kind, about sixty students and forty personnel took part.

Leaders of the mock disaster said the exercise is something ISU, Ivy Tech and Hulman Field Airport plans to do again in the future.