Students in white jumpsuits and gas masks apprehensively walked through a smoke-filled classroom rescuing victims and testing for radiation during a disaster simulation Thursday in West Quad.
Natural Resources Professor John Pichtel said the simulation was part of a Natural Resources and Environmental Management course that deals with emergency response to biological, chemical and nuclear hazards.
An incident command mandate, issued in response to Sept. 11, specifies what to do in response to a terrorist threat, he said.
Students in this simulation followed those guidelines, he said.
The students received a simulated phone call, informing them that terrorists had used weapons of mass destruction and caused injuries and possible deaths of people in a classroom, Pichtel said.
Operation Director Jeff Edger briefed four teams of students, including reconnaissance, sampling, extraction, and decontamination teams, giving each of them their assignments.
The reconnaissance team then moved into the possibly contaminated "hot zone" where the disaster took place. The team used radiation detectors and chemically reactive paper to determine if nerve agents or mustard gases were present in the room, Pichtel said. No radioactive material was detected, so the team entered the room.
Music blared from a radio and four mannequins, representing victims, lay scattered on the floor.
The purpose of the music was to simulate a noisy environment and to make it harder for the students to communicate and concentrate, Pichtel said.
Sophomore criminology major Gordon Stovall said he thought the exercise was fun but overwhelming.
"You had to know your job well," he said. "We had to make a lot of on-the-spot decisions and show leadership under pressure."
After the reconnaissance team checked the status of the "victims" and the room for any radioactivity or other possible threats, the sampling and extraction teams entered the "hot zone," Pichtel said.
The sampling team took liquid samples from the room to examine their radioactivity, he said.
The extraction team loaded victims onto stretchers and carried them out of the "hot zone" and into the "warm zone", where a decontamination team stripped off the mannequins' clothing and scrubbed down their bodies, he said.
Each team member was also scrubbed down in their white jumpsuits after they exited the "hot zone," Pichtel said.
Once the scene had been fully assessed and cleared of victims, it was declared safe for the public, he said.
Participants were debriefed at the end of the simulation, Pichtel said.
Except for a few glitches, such as communication problems, the simulation went well, he said.
"The students knew their jobs well," he said. "They knew what to do, how to operate the devices and take the correct samples."
The students might have anticipated more elements of surprise in the simulation, Pichtel said.
"In previous activities I have set booby traps, so everyone was on their toes," he said.
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