Florida Agencies Know Drill on Terror

For a mass casualty simulation involving terrorists, a high school pep rally, radioactive explosives and a Bayflite helicopter, the scene in Largo was surprisingly pleasant.

Among the fake blood and injuries and the men in decontamination suits, the nursing students whimsically called for help and asked for the hunkiest rescue workers. One of the victims was a spring break reminder: an inflatable male doll with a fixed smile and hairy chest.

The doll "victim" lay on a graveled sidewalk outside the Discovery Room and Student Services Center. On any other day, the Pinellas County School District building is just a small and unassuming structure.

But for the sake of an annual countywide drill, it masqueraded as a high school gymnasium packed with students for a pep rally infiltrated by terrorists who blew up a dirty bomb, exposing everyone to radioactive material and flying shrapnel.

About 400 people had gathered to act as victims when the drill started at 9:30 a.m. The vast majority, as the walking wounded, took themselves to area emergency rooms, which had to deal with the sudden influx of patients who needed to be decontaminated, said Doug Meyer, a county emergency management coordinator.

"We tried to overwhelm the hospitals so they institute these emergency protocols," he said.

Every hospital with an ER, 13 countywide, received "patients," many of them nursing students at St. Petersburg College. Others came from the medical programs at Boca Ciega and Palm Harbor University high schools.

Then there was Inflatable Guy.

At the bomb scene, Largo Fire Rescue and a handful of other agencies had to deal with about 50 victims who were seriously wounded. That included a toddler mannequin airlifted to Bayfront Medical Center in St. Petersburg. Inflatable Guy also was in bad shape, according to the black ribbon someone tied around his leg.

Black signaled to the rescue workers that he was essentially a lost cause. Among the chaos of a mass casualty disaster, that meant he should be passed over for those with red ribbons, people with serious injuries who might live.

So about 10:20 a.m., two Largo firefighters walked toward the victim. It was warm outside and they breathed through face shields. The mustachioed doll's blue eyes were wide open.

"He's unresponsive," one firefighter said.

They tried strapping him to a yellow gurney, but that is like attempting to wrap a rubber band around a balloon.

Finally, they carried him to a grassy area just beyond the Discovery Room parking lot. Two big yellow decontamination tents were set up. There were paramedics and members of the county's Hazardous Materials Response Team,HAZMAT, tending to several patients, and soon man-doll was taken inside for the decon process.

Meanwhile, lying on the grass was a young woman with red track shoes and three layers of fake intestine spilling out of her stomach.

Looks like you have a nasty injury there.

"Yes, I do," said Bethany Farmer of Clearwater. "I've been waiting here a long time. Since it started they laid me out. It's been a good 30, 45 minutes at least. They can't find a backboard, apparently."

Farmer, a 25-year-old SPC nursing student, described how she received her wound: "We were inside, there was a bomb, and it went off. And it burned several of us. Shrapnel hit my stomach.

"In all reality, I'd be dead by now," she said.

That afternoon, staff from the county Health Department and emergency management and area rescue agencies and the school district were going to assess what went right and what didn't. Meyer, the county emergency management coordinator, said that overall the exercise went well.

"It's not cheap to pull off one of these drills," Meyer said. "But it's one of those necessary evils where, if we're not prepared now, then we won't be prepared then, either. . . . Every time you train you get better for the next incident."