In two weeks the first PARTY to be held in Kamsack in five years will begin with a mock car accident at the intersection of Stewart Street and Dixon Avenue.
“We want people to know that it’s a mock accident so they don’t get worried,” Allison Thomsen said last week when she, a Grade 11 student at Kamsack Comprehensive Institute, and grade 12 students Devin Klapatiuk and Kaylie Bowes, concluded a meeting with other participants planning the PARTY (Prevent Alcohol and Risk-Related Trauma in Youth) exercise.
The three students, plus Lexie Tomochko, are members of the Community Health Advisory Committee. They are heading the organizing committee that has been meeting since the beginning of the year planning the PARTY, which is basically a demonstration of a possible consequence of a youth’s decision to make bad choices.
It is being held for the benefit and education of school’s Grade 10 students, the students said. Plus two students from each of the high schools in Canora, Sturgis, Preeceville and Norquay have been invited to attend so that the experience might encourage them to organize similar events in their communities.
The mock car crash will occur at 9:30 a.m. on May 12, the students said, adding that in the incident, a vehicle that will have been “crashed” into a tree, will have three victims: the driver, who will be arrested; a deceased passenger, and a severely injured passenger.
The roles of the victims will be students and the rest of the school’s 44 Grade 10 students will create an audience, they said. The crash will be narrated by volunteers involved in the community’s emergency services and will include a presentation by an occupational therapist. On site will be members of the RCMP, fire department and Duck Mountain Ambulance Care.
The students will then go to the Kamsack Hospital and Nursing Home, where they will be “treated” by staff to simulate accident victims. They will be bandaged and placed into restraints similar to how actual accident victims would be treated.
With the assistance of volunteers, the bound and bandaged students would attempt to eat their lunch, thereby obtaining first-hand understanding of what some of the obstacles one must confront when thrust into such a situation.
Following the lunch, the students will be transported to Wolkowski Funeral Home where Dereck Wolkowski will explain what is done when he is asked to process a deceased victim of an accident.
Other volunteers who will be speaking to the students during the event will be Ken Thompson, a coroner; members of Parkland Victims Services, and a survivor of an actual incident which resulted in actual victims.
The students said that they had attended a PARTY that was held in Yorkton in December and decided to organize one for Kamsack because one had not been held in the community since 2011.
Helping to organize the event, the students acknowledged the assistance of the following businesses and individuals: Andrychuk Funeral Home for a donation of $150; Rob Ritchie, Dave Matechuk and Charles Goossen, donations of $100 each; Kamsack Co-op, donation of a gift card valued at $50; KevLen Towing, free towing services and a vehicle for the mock accident, and the profit to be realized from a barbecue being held by Kamsack’s Emergency Measures Organization on May 3.
Also assisting with the PARTY are the Good Spirit School Division, Sunrise Health Region and Town of Kamsack.
The students said that such PARTYs are normally held for Grade 10 students because students in that grade are just getting into the age that they may be asked to make choices regarding alcohol use and operating or riding in a vehicle.
It is believed that once students are confronted with the realities of the possible disastrous consequences of making poor decisions they are more apt to make better decisions.
