BOOM! Airbus 320 was on route to Boston when 150 passengers and six staff memebers suffered an in-flight explosion--that was the set-up for the disaster simulation held in ASAC on Saturday.
The participants of this day long seminar were Peggy Sherrer's
Responding to Psychological Trauma class and Dan Williams's
Covering Disaster class.
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| Center is Peggy Sherrer being interviewed after the simulation. |
The day started at nine am with an online interview with Elana Newman. Newman is a professor of Psychology at the University of Tulsa.
The professor was invited to participate in the disaster exercise because of her leadership experiance in both areas of journalism and psychology: she is both a research director for the
Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma as well as co-director of
Tulsa Institute of Trauma, Abuse, and Neglect.
After the interview and a short break for breakfast of bagels, juice, and donuts the classes were introduced to the first responder panel.
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| From left to right: Danny Bigelow, Mark Podgewaite, and Charles Bethell |
Charles Bethell is a clinical psychologist and mentions he is a regular on the panel every year. Bethell is the person called in by people like Bigelow or Podgewaite if they need a psycologist to look into an incident.
Mark Podgewaite and Danny Bigalow are both locals to the Lyndon area. Podgewaite is the director of Lyndon Rescue and Bigalow is with the Lyndonville Fire Department.
Before the simulation began, Elizabeth Mehren: professor of Journalism at Boston University, arrived. Mehren, as well as being a professor in Boston, is a journalist having written for newspapers like: the Los Angelos Times and the San Fransisco Chronicle.
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| Mehren in an interview after the first simulation. |
The class participants were given just a few days to brief themselves with their part. Their job was to role-play as best that they could with the situation that was handed to them. In the simulation there were four types of parts: the actor, the human services official, the reporter, and the observer.
The observer would hop from room to room and look at the situations in front of them. The human services reporters were held in one ASAC room that represented the family center. They were in charge of calming the actors down who, some of who had suffered serious injuries.
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| A counselor and a witness discuss in the family center. |
The actors in the simulation had the hard job of remaining in character. Mariah Ogden played the mother of two children who were affected by the plane crash. A section of fuselage slid off the runway and hit the family of five. Mariah, as the mother character, had to deal with the death of her son Taylor and the critical injury of her Daughter, Courtney.
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| Mariah playing her part of mother to two injured and killed children. |
The first seminar went smoothly with only a few tears shed. Hannah Corda played a first responder fireman who was disturbed and upset by the fact she couldn't save more people in the crash.
In the middle of the confusion of facts and different scenarios playing out at the same time, there were reporter sneaking into rooms and prying people for answers. Some of the reporters were: Kaylee Murphy, who stayed patiently in the hospital waiting for the right moment to ask questions and Josh Cingranelli who bounced room to room ushering witnesses and responders for the number of people killed in the crash.
All in all the Disaster exercise went smoothly. After each simulation the class collected back and debriefed after each session. They all seemed to come away with a greater understanding of what it means to be in an act first, think second situation.
