Seventy-six students just learning how to drive gathered at the Humboldt Uniplex on May 12 to PARTY.
The Preventing Alcohol and Risk-related Trauma in Youth (PARTY) program lays out the consequences of risky behaviour for youth, including the aftermath of drinking and driving.
All from rural schools in the area, the students took their seats in the Elgar Petersen Arena, laughing and chatting as students are prone to do, just after 9 a.m..
Then a rather grisly scene was unveiled right in front of them, and silence reigned.
Two cars, smashed together, with glass, gravel and mud everywhere, sat on the floor in front of the players' boxes. Each vehicle had contained two occupants who were now covered in blood and gore.
Silently, the students listened to the story of what had just happened.
One car, driven by a drunk, texting teen, had slammed into the other vehicle on the highway. The drunk driver was relatively uninjured, but terrified by what had just occurred.
The passenger in the other vehicle, who was not wearing her seatbelt, was ejected through the windshield, landing on the hood of the other car. She died instantly.
Next to the drunk driver, her passenger hit the windshield with her head, and was unconscious at the scene, with a massive head injury.
The driver of the other car had a spinal injury and could no longer feel her legs.
Emergency services, the students were told, had just been called to the scene, and were about to arrive.
Humboldt and District Ambulance Service, Humboldt RCMP and Fire Department all got to the scene at about the same time.
Within minutes, they had removed the dead girl from the hood of one of the vehicles, had taken the drunk and babbling driver of the car to the police cruiser, and were working on removing the two people trapped in the vehicles.
Using the Jaws of Life, they cut the driver door off one car, and the passenger door off of the other. They then removed both victims from the cars, placed them on spineboards, and put them in the waiting ambulance.
While the ambulance carried those people away, firefighters remained at the scene, cleaning up, and finally removed the dead body after placing it in a body bag.
The entire scenario, which ran a little slower than real responses do, was over within half an hour.
But it seemed to go both faster and slower at the same time for the victims in the vehicles.
I should know. I was one of those victims.
A crash victim's POV
It was about six weeks ago that the editorial room staff at the Humboldt Journal were approached about participating in the PARTY program in Humboldt in May.
We were asked if one of us was willing to be a victim, in order to write about the experience from that point of view.
I said okay. And that is how I found myself sitting in a smashed up vehicle, blood dripping down my face and supposedly unconscious.
Now, I've been to scenes of actual collisions and covered more vehicle extrication exercises than I'd care to admit in my career. I knew what was going to happen, the steps the emergency services would take in assessing the scene and deciding on a course of action to take.
But I didn't know how I would feel being at the middle of it all instead of in my usual role as observer.
It was definitely weird. And uncomfortable.
The first thing I noticed, once the action started to unfold, was the lights.
Though I was forced to keep my eyes closed by both the role I was playing, and because some fake blood was dripping in my eye, I could still see the flashing lights approaching the vehicle.
I felt Briana, who played the drunken driver, poke me, and heard her ask if I was okay.
I couldn't respond.
That was frustrating.
I heard the voice of the first responder to our vehicle - I think it was one of the RCMP - and I felt Briana leave the vehicle, which was a little wobbly in its position half on top of another car.
Terry Hastings, an emergency medical technician, advanced (EMTA) with Humboldt and District Ambulance Service, crawled into the vehicle next to me on the front seat. He examined me, checking for broken bones, to see if I was breathing, and to see if I would respond to his questions.
I wouldn't. I couldn't. Again, it was frustrating.
Moving to the back seat, Terry carefully leaned over and lifted my head, which was drooping onto my left shoulder, and straightened my neck. He then asked firefighter Darcy Skarra to hold my head and neck in place - to do C-spine, as they call it - and Darcy crawled in the vehicle behind me.
I'd seen this done many times, but never been on the receiving end. His grip on my head and neck was pretty darn tight. I wasn't going anywhere.
Soon, Terry came back and put a neck collar on me, which was uncomfortable, to say the least. He made sure I could breathe and swallow, but that was about all I could do with that thing on. I couldn't turn my head at all - my field of vision, had I been able to open my eyes, was limited to what was directly in front of me.
Terry also put an oxygen mask on my face, which again limited what I could see when I peeked out from under my eyelashes.
Though I now had a collar on, Darcy remained in the vehicle with me, chatting about what was happening with the vehicle I was in. Had I been conscious, it would have been comforting, to have someone explain what was going on.
A blanket was placed over top of me and Darcy both, to protect us from what happened next.
"Breaking glass!" someone yelled outside the car, just before a hard object hit the window next to me two or three times.
With a crunch, the window gave way, and glass rained down inside the car.
I knew, at this point, the firefighters would be setting up to use the Jaws of Life. I heard cracks and pops and some bangs, and the voice of Fire Chief Norbert LeBlanc assessing how the cutting was going.
The Jaws were far louder than I'd ever realized they would be.
With a final crunch, the door was removed.
Then Terry was back, and he had friends with him.
Mike Kwasnica, another firefighter, crawled into the front seat beside me. He helped Terry roll my hips so that the spineboard could go underneath me. Then, with a number of hands on me, including Rhonda Mortenson, another EMTA, they turned me and slid me onto the spineboard. It took a few lifts to get me high enough on the board, and I lost a shoe somewhere in the car.
What really struck me, though, besides my lost shoe, was how coordinated they were when they moved me, and how gentle. There was no pulling, no tugging, nothing uncomfortable - just a very smooth lift.
Had I been really hurting, I would have appreciated that.
Still, it was slightly embarrassing, having all these people lift me.
Once I was centred on the board, everyone around me that I still couldn't see started strapping me onto that board. My head was blocked, further preventing my neck from moving, my arms positioned where they wouldn't flop off the stretcher, and the rest of me was fastened quite securely to the board.
At Terry's instruction, a stretcher was brought over and I was loaded onto it.
I still have no idea where the ambulance was parked or in what direction I went in once I was on the stretcher. It all moved so fast, and the one time I blinked, all I saw were the arena lights.
Once I was loaded into the ambulance next to Giselle, the victim from the other car, the ambulance started to move. Terry and Rhonda were with us in the back, and they attached an IV to my arm with tape. We rolled out of the arena, and parked at the side of the building, to wait for the rest of the scenario to end.
Because someone was filming this mock collision for posterity, we were required to stay as we were until the cameraman showed up. Terry and Rhonda also decided to use the time to hook me up to a heart monitor, which beeped reassuringly.
The waiting was hard - on my head and on my back. The spineboard is not a comfortable place to lay, especially when you cannot move to relieve any pressure points. I understand it's necessary to prevent further injury, but I can't imagine how bad it would feel if I was actually injured.
It was also frustrating trying to talk to anyone because you couldn't see them. I could only see the ceiling of the ambulance, and sometimes Terry's face. It was at this time that I asked about what else had happened at the scene, since I didn't have my usual birds-eye-view of the situation. Had I actually been unconscious, I would have missed everything and woken up extremely confused. But awake as I was, even if I had been able to open my eyes, I wouldn't have been able to keep track of everything going on. A victim's point of view, I was discovering, was severely limited.
I didn't know how many students were in the stands, how or when Meghan, who played the dead girl, had been removed from the hood of our car, or where Briana had gone. And I had no idea which emergency responders had been helping me.
Why victims get confused at scenes was becoming very clear.
By the time the cameraman came by the ambulance, Terry had fitted another oxygen mask on my face for filming, because I was apparently no longer breathing on my own.
Finally, a few minutes later, I was unstrapped from the board and allowed to sit up. I had to sit for a few seconds, however, to get my bearings and to get my balance back.
As the wound was removed from my forehead and my shoe recovered from the wreck inside, it struck me how relatively easy it was for me to walk away from this collision.. Sure, I had been uncomfortable for a few minutes, but there was no treatment at the local hospital, no rush to the X-ray room or into a hospital in Saskatoon. I was disoriented, but not half as much as I would have been, had I been hurt.
I used to wonder what it would be like to be a victim. Now I know. It's not fun. And I hope I never find myself in that situation in real life.
I hope everyone who reads this gets that message.
For additional photos, see photo galleries.
