You may remember the article I wrote, Cultivating Command and Leadership, where I detailed what happened during our final disaster simulation and how I ended up taking command of the entire team. It was the kind of experience that made me want to get even more involved in disaster preparation and mass casualty incident training.

When you graduate from CERT class, you are put in a system that notifies you if there is ever a disaster in your local community, so that you can respond to the scene and help out with medical triage, search and rescue, and even fire suppression. Periodically, Dana and I would receive notifications from the system about events and trainings being held in town that would enhance our training. But nothing terribly intense or interesting has happened since I graduated from CERT. Until recently that is! Dana and I received a notification that the North Las Vegas Fire Dept. needed volunteers to assist them in a Mass Casualty Incident drill. We would get to play accident victims, complete with bloody make-up and fake injuries, and more importantly, we’d get to watch how our actual fire and rescue crews handled themselves in the drill. I was giddy with excitement and signed us up to attend 2 out of the 6 incidences.

Here is an account of what happened to us during the drill and our thoughts about what we experienced. Dana is going to share his thoughts as well since we were in different positions both times.

The Briefing
All the participants were briefed on what was going to go down. We were to get our characters, go to make-up to get our fake injuries put in place, and be ready to go by 8:30pm. We were given a safe word to use in case we really got sick or injured during the simulation. If we said, “Real world” and then made a complaint, the rescue worker would know we needed real help. Otherwise, we were told, to really get into our characters so it would feel as real to the rescue workers as possible. I was looking forward to acting and hamming it up a little.

Dana’s Experience:
To be honest, it was your run of the mill briefing. Sign in, sign waiver, and wait for further instructions. They had pens with pink ink, which I found interesting as you don’t really expect to find pink pens at a manly firehouse.

The head fireman in charge had a strong presence and was able to communicate effectively what was to go down that night. After our briefing, he assigned roles. Each “role” came with a write-up of the person, injury, vital signs etc. Erin and I were both a bit thrown off as the write-up was done in what I can only imagine is ‘Firespeak.’ Lots of shorthand, acronyms and codes we didn’t fully understand. Erin actually made a comment about this, and we were both impressed to see that at the second go-around, the severely injured characters had a plain-english write-up describing their injuries so they could act them out more accurately.

Getting into Make-Up
For our first simulation, I played a pedestrian who had been hit by a truck. I had a fib/tib deformity and upon examination they would discover I had internal injuries. I got make-up put on my leg, and then read my card over carefully to make sure I understood my role. Some of the abbreviations were hard to figure out so I asked a paramedic what LOC, CP, SOB, JVD, CC, and Ax0x4 meant. How could I play my part properly if I didn’t fully understand my symptoms? Those abbreviations stand for loss of consciousness, chest pain, shortness of breath, jugular vein distension, chief complaint, and alert and oriented x 4. Watching everyone get their make-up on was fun. Some people had fake bones sticking out of their extremities, and someone had their intestines protruding from their body. These were obviously the more critical patients!

Dana’s experience:
My first injury was “Airbag Face.” I could only guess I was the person driving the truck that nailed Erin. My injuries just required me to have a couple splotchy blood spots and chemical burns on my face and arms where my fictitious airbag hit me on impact. Other than that my injuries were fairly unremarkable, basically just some back pain. I remained conscious during the accident, and was well aware of what speed I was travelling at, and everything that happened.

The make-up people were a local indie film crew that was volunteering their services. I was really impressed with how they performed. They knew their injuries well, and had plenty of neat looking ‘accessories’ on hand to embellish wounds. Erin and I laughed that they likely have spent lots of time staring at nasty wounds and injuries to be as good as they were.

Getting into Position
The rescue workers were getting briefed while we were getting our make-up on. There must have been at least 50 of them. We were taken out to the scene of the accident. They were simulating a bus stop accident that involved 2 cars that were seriously munched, plus 5 trucks and vans that had also collided. A guy with a map started placing us in our positions. Since I was a pedestrian and had a broken leg, I had to lay on the ground between two trucks. It was a hundred degrees outside, and I was lying in dirt and gravel. Not comfortable, but I didn’t care, I was just excited to start playing!

Dana’s experience:
I lucked out. The first time I got to sit in a truck right next to the munched cars. Second time I played “walking wounded,” so no dirt and gravel ever touched my butt.

Action!
A guy came by and said, “We’re live. Start acting.” We were told to really get into our characters and try to play them as true to life as possible. Fire trucks rolled onto the field with their lights going. I was wondering how they were going to see our cards in the dark, but they brought a crane in overhead with lights to illuminate the entire scene. I was so excited! I started moaning and complaining that I needed help. And then I waited. And waited. There must have been 40 or so wounded people on the field and about 30-35 rescue workers, so I assumed that someone would come by to triage me within a few minutes. But that didn’t happen. I had a limited view from my vantage point on the ground, sandwiched between two trucks, but it seemed as if most of the rescue workers went to the two munched cars to extract the badly injured in the vehicles.

After about 20 minutes, I decided to be more vocal. I grabbed a lady near me who was “walking wounded” and said, “Help me, please! My leg is killing me. Can you get a paramedic for me?” She said, “Are we allowed to do that?” I said, “Yeah, they told us in the briefing that it was okay to make a nuisance of ourselves because the guys had to get used to that too and learn how to handle people at a major accident scene.” She lit up, and started walking around yelling, “We need help over here! This lady is badly injured. She can’t move. Someone please help her!” A rescue worker came to me and said, “What seems to be your problem?” I replied, “My leg hurts really bad.” He took a cursory glance at the card hanging around my neck which shows my vital signs and injuries, and he put a tag around my wrist that said, “Delayed” meaning my injuries weren’t critical. He didn’t do the head to toe assessment that we were taught to do in CERT training. If he had, I would have reported tenderness and rigidity to the abdomen and he might have noticed I had internal bleeding.

So I waited some more. And some more. After lying on the ground for about 45 minutes, a guy came by with a backboard. He rolled me onto it and strapped my head in place and buckled all my extremities in. I felt very trapped and claustrophobic at that and started to wonder why I volunteered for this. Another guy came by to do my assessment. He asked if I could wiggle my toes, which I could. He checked for a pulse in my leg, which was good. He asked what happened to me and I said, “I was hit by a truck.” He seemed shocked and said to the other rescue worker, “She got hit by a truck and all she has is a broken leg? Are you sure?” The guy said, “Yeah I guess.” They both looked dubious about that, but assumed the original guy who tagged me had been thorough (he hadn’t). Just as they were getting ready to move me to the treatment area, another guy came by and said, “Why are you working on a delayed person? We have critically wounded people over there.” So they left me, lying on the board, in the most uncomfortable position I could be in. My lower back was starting to hurt for real.

Luckily, someone came by to check on me every few minutes. But I laid there for about 20 more minutes wondering what was happening since I couldn’t turn my head. It sucked.

Finally three guys came to take me away. At this point I realized they still had no idea that I had internal injuries so I started complaining that my stomach was hurting really bad. They asked if I needed to vomit and I said no, so they paid that no more attention. They put me on a gurney and wheeled me halfway to the triage area. The senior paramedic told the younger paramedic to stay with me in case I vomited, but the younger guy really wanted to get back into the fray. So after 30 seconds, he just up and left me. I was annoyed, and fake dying from internal injuries no one knew about yet. I grabbed my cell phone from my pocket and texted Dana, “Come find me and get me off this backboard!” He didn’t answer. I knew his injuries were light and figured he was roaming around somewhere. I was wrong.

Someone came by a short while later and said they needed the gurney and asked why I had been left all alone. No one had a good answer. So they took me off the gurney (still tied to the horrible backboard) and put me in the treatment area for triage. Now we were getting somewhere! They asked my name and if I remember the accident. I complained about pain in my leg and told them my stomach was now killing me. He looked at my card and then started slapping cards on my body to simulate treatments. I had cards that said IV hookup, blood pressure cuff, bandages, splint. I asked if I could please get up off the backboard and they said yes but told me to stay where I was because they had to simulate putting me in the ambulance. When I sat up, I saw that Dana had been lying next to me on a backboard of his own. No wonder he never answered me. He was trussed up like a Christmas turkey.

They took me to the ambulance where a senior paramedic stood waiting to receive me. He asked what was wrong with me, and they said, “possible fracture of the tib/fib, otherwise stable.” The senior paramedic looked at my card and actually read it all the way through. He said, “Did anyone notice that this woman has internal bleeding?” One replied, “Uh no, we thought she only had a broken leg.” He said, “Did you assess her?” They shook their heads. He said, “If you had, you would have noticed she has tenderness in her stomach and rigidity. She should have been labeled critical and transported a long time ago. She probably won’t live to see the hospital. She’s been out here, what, an hour and a half? Yeah, she’s probably dead.” The paramedics with me seemed really crestfallen. I felt sort of sorry for them, but I had tried to clue them in all along the way.

I was released, so I went to check on Dana who was just getting his assessment.

Dana’s experience:
For the first incident, I was sitting right next to the munched cars, and since my injuries were light, I was able to have a first-hand view of the extraction teams brace, chop and open up the munched cars.

The assessment area for me was fairly unremarkable. Being that I didn’t really have any serious injuries there were no surprises for the medical assessment team like Erin had. I was just asked a bunch of questions about my injuries and then released. I was going to live!

Assessment:
Once we were released, we started walking the scene and talking about our experience. We were both sort of shocked by a few things that happened.

First, from CERT class we were taught that everyone in the field needs to be triaged and tagged before anyone actually gets treated. This didn’t happen. It seemed as if they started at one end of the accident and slowly made their way to the other end. I wasn’t triaged or tagged for at least 30 minutes. Had I been critical I would have had very little time to get to a hospital for treatment.

Second, I was tagged incorrectly as “delayed” which means I could survive my wounds without getting treatment right away. This was not true as my character had internal bleeding. Just because a patient doesn’t complain about pain in an area doesn’t mean they aren’t injured in that area. If the paramedics had either read my card completely or done a head to toe assessment, they would have figured it out much sooner.

Third, once the first rescue worker tagged me as delayed no one else bothered to double check that. So even when one guy found out I’d been hit by a truck I could see the light go on in his head that I should be more injured than just a broken leg, but when he saw I’d been tagged as delayed he overrode his own critical thinking and decided I must be in the appropriate category.

And lastly, it was hard for us lay people to understand what the abbreviations and symbols on our cards were. I wrote a letter to the Captain outlining a few changes I wanted to see made to those cards so that we, the actors, could better play our roles.

Dana’s experience:
Ditto what Erin said.

I also was a little put off by how fast the rescuers went to my injury card instead of discerning what was wrong with me. My acting isn’t great, but I was hoping they’d do a little questioning before they grabbed the cheat sheet and started reading the answers.

Our Second Experience:
We went back a second time for another simulation. I was really surprised and happy to find that the captain had made some changes to the simulation cards so that it was much easier for us to understand how to play our roles. When it was time to get our roles I asked for a critically injured character so I could see the difference in treatment time. He gave me a character who was in the passenger seat of the van, (yay, no gravel and dirt!) had a head injury, abdominal pain, dizziness, and nausea. I had also lost my front teeth and had reopened an old foot injury. I was a mess.

There are three triage assessment items. The first is capillary refill. When they squeeze a finger or toe your blood has to fill it back up within 2 seconds. Otherwise, you’re critical. The second is respirations. If you’re breathing less than 10 or more than 30 times in a minute, you’re critical. Both of those were okay for my character. But the third item is mental status. If a patient can’t recall the accident or is unconscious or confused, that is a critical item. My character card said I had lost consciousness at the scene and couldn’t remember the accident. I got in the van and was there with 4 other people. When they yelled action I couldn’t wait to see how long it would take them to do their initial assessment.

Unfortunately, a guy came by the van and said, “How you all doing in there? Everyone okay?” I don’t think you should let the patient tell you whether they’re okay or not. How would they know for sure? They could be in shock! So the rest of the van passengers vocalized their chief complaint “My ankle hurts. My wrist hurst. My back hurts, etc.” I looked dazed, confused, and my head was lolling around. He didn’t notice, and no one in my van spoke on my behalf. The guy left us to move on to more critically injured people.

After 10-15 minutes I said, “This sucks. We weren’t assessed or tagged. And I have critical wounds. I’m probably gonna die in here waiting for them.” So the lady in the back seat said, “Oh no you won’t. We’re gonna get you help!” Then she started being super vocal (I loved this woman!). “Hey, hello, excuse me! We need help in here! Our friend is horribly wounded, she lost consciousness, she’s not BREATHING!” Okay, I was breathing, but I appreciated her efforts on my behalf. So a guy came by and said, “What’s going on in here?” She told him I was severely wounded. That’s when he looked at my card for the first time. He asked, “Do you know where you are?” I said, “Uh, Narnia?” He laughed a little. Then said, “Do you remember the accident?” I said, “Was I in an accident?” Doing everything I could to portray mental impairment so he’d get the clue. He said, “You’re alright. Just hang tight. We’ll get someone here soon.” I held out my teeth and said, “I think these are my teeth.” He said, “Ewww, uh just hang on to those for now.”

Just a few minutes later three guys came and dumped me out onto a backboard lickety split. This time I was put on a gurney right away and they didn’t strap my head down due to my head injury being in the way. Before I knew it, though, I found myself put into an actual ambulance! I protested. “Wait, I’m a simulated transport. I’m not going to the hospital” which is where they were taking most of the critically wounded people so the doctors at the hospital could practice too. The paramedic replied, “Oh yeah, you’re going.” I said, “No wait, I can’t go to the hospital. I got people waiting for me. I’m paying a sitter by the hour. Please don’t take me.” He said, “Oh, well, alright, let me find out if we’re taking you or not.” When he came back he said they weren’t taking me, but just then someone got in the front of the ambulance and started up the truck. I said, “Does THAT guy know we’re not going!?!?!” They told him to turn off the truck.

So now we’re sitting in an air-conditioned vehicle (ahhhh) and they do their assessment. The senior paramedic asks the younger guy to assess me. He missed my critical injuries on the basic three item triage assessment. So the senior paramedic explained to him that mental impairment is indicative of a brain injury which puts me in the critical or immediate category. I mean, I learned this in CERT class and I’m not a trained professional. Why don’t the paramedics know this?

I was taken to the triage treatment area, assessed properly this time, and sent on my way.

Dana’s experience:
Before I start, I just want to say Erin’s knocked out teeth were amazing. Bloody Tic Tacs in gauze… She made tons of friends with the busted teeth too. Probably one of the best conversation starters ever.

I also got to see my friend “The Back Board” in action, and maybe gained some more clarity into why it’s now a nemesis of mine. They were carrying a guy out who was about my size and the thing looked more like a hammock than a board. There was a definite U-shape happening. When he was released I overheard him laughing about “feeling like he was going to fall off the thing.” Coincidence?

What we learned
I had a blast playing in the simulation and would definitely do it again. I know it must be hard to coordinate so many units and people. I was somewhat disappointed by the level of skill of the paramedics and hope they are getting properly trained. I think Dana and I both left the simulation deciding under no circumstances did we ever want to be in a car accident in Las Vegas. But we know it was a training drill and I’m sure the senior paramedics and firefighters in charge did their best to educate and debrief their younglings after the drill.

Dana’s Experience:
Pretty much what Erin said. It was a lot of fun, but not as intense and satisfying as I thought it would be. If you ever come to Vegas, try not to be in a multiple car / bus-station accident.

If you want to find a CERT class in your area (they’re all free!) go here.

I’m a heart-centered person who’s very compassionate, kind, gentle, and caring. That’s my dominant energy. As a result, in my life I usually take a back seat to others with more power, confidence, courage, and authority. Never bothered me; I was happy to let others take command … and the responsibility that usually went with it. I was the ship’s counselor, not the captain. But over the years I realized that walking around just caring about others wasn’t enough. Caring about an impoverished person doesn’t feed them. Caring about child abuse doesn’t save a single child. It’s only by taking action, by exerting our power and courage, that we can effect change. Likewise, if you’re someone who is strong in the areas of power, courage, and authority but you’re not heart-centered and caring, you could end up being a guy like Donald Trump or Dick Cheney; people willing to walk all over someone to get what they want.

Years ago I played an online role playing game called City of Heroes. My character was the group’s healer. I stood in the back and cast heals on people and would occasionally throw a punch, but I was pretty squishy so never ventured too far into the fray lest I be crushed by a single attack. This character I created was a pretty accurate representation of who I was as a person. Willing to let others fight and potentially be injured, but there to provide comfort, healing, and support. I was pretty comfortable in my role. One day, though, just for the heck of it, I created a scrapper character, a hand-to-hand combat fighter that couldn’t do anything from a distance. I had to run in and bear the brunt of the first wave of attack, and I was the one doling out the punishment. I felt really uncomfortable playing this violent character… at first. And then I started to feel more powerful and tough, and I started to really enjoy getting in there, getting my hands dirty, protecting the squishy healers in the back from being pummeled to death. As it turns out, there was a little fighter in me all along.

After I stopped playing City of Heroes I asked myself if in life I was a healer or a scrapper. I wanted to say healer, but after spending so much virtual time as a scrapper I realized it had brought something else out in me besides the caring, supportive, after-the-fact helper. I liked the feeling of power and responsibility that came with taking command of a group. And I also discovered I was pretty good at taking command. I wondered if in my real life I could channel the same energy as courageously as I did in a game where I couldn’t really be physically hurt.

I made a conscious decision to start working on my command and leadership skills. If you’re a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation, I was Deanna Troi taking the Bridge Officer’s exam so I could command the ship in case of emergency. So over the years I started volunteering to lead. In my toastmaster club, Voice Links, I volunteered to be President, even though I didn’t yet feel qualified. I studied and learned what I needed to be a successful club president, and I was told by people who’d been in the club for many years that I did a fantastic job. But Voice Links is a pretty small club and its members are very easy-going and therefore easy to lead. It was the equivalent of leading a transport ship. I wanted to test myself further.

Last July I became the President of Powerhouse Pros, one of the largest toastmaster clubs in the southwest region. This was like taking command of the Enterprise, the flagship of the Federation. I felt tremendous anxiety about taking the position as I didn’t want to screw up the club with my lack of leadership ability. But as time went by I discovered again that I was comfortable with command. It became easier every week. There are a lot more challenges in this club than there are in Voice Links, but I’m loving it and have become quite comfortable with the job.

Last week, however, the universe threw me a test. Was I the scrapper or still the healer? The captain or the counselor? The leader or the follower?

Many of you know from my tweets that I’ve been taking a CERT class. That stands for Community Emergency Response Team. It’s a course you can take for free, sponsored by Homeland Security, that teaches you what to do when disaster strikes your town and first responders are overwhelmed. You’re basically trained on how to help yourself, your family, and your neighbors survive until the cavalry can reach you. You learn medical triage, fire suppression, search and rescue, disaster psychology (like how to help victims cope with loss and fear), and lots more. I took the class with my friend, Dana Richardson, who had taken the class before and took it again as a refresher. It was nice going through the class with him because he already knew so much and was a good source of information for me when I had questions between classes. Dana was pretty good at this stuff, and a couple of weeks ago he acted as our Incident Commander when we did a light simulation of how to do search and rescue in buildings. Everyone in the class relied on Dana since we all knew he’d taken the class before. This was to be a big mistake however, and something that taught me a big lesson.

Last week we had our final class. We had to do our big disaster simulation, which basically involved handling the aftermath of an “earthquake.” Several members of the fire department were on hand to help us with our simulation and make sure no one really got hurt, and our two instructors were on hand as well. The week prior we had signed up for our roles. Everyone nominated Dana to be our Incident Commander, the person on scene who is totally in charge and has to decide where everyone goes and what everyone does in the midst of chaos. Below him are the Medical, Search and Rescue, and Operations (fire) leaders. And each of those leaders has a team of people. I signed up to be on the search and rescue team… pretty low down on the totem pole. My job was going to be to search rooms for “victims” and bring them to medical for triage. I didn’t feel remotely qualified for a higher position. I was new and inexperienced. Those who had taken the class before we put into the leadership positions. All this planning turned out to be for nothing though as you will soon see.

The night had arrived for our final class. We were given our CERT bags which included a helmet, goggles, vest, flashlight, first aid kit, and so much more. Dana knew I was giddy with excitement and nervousness. I had heard the simulation was pretty intense. But I knew all I had to do was listen to the Search and Rescue leader and do what he said, so I figured I was in good shape. We were told to take a quick break to use the bathroom and then to meet outside to begin the simulation. When I got outside though, I didn’t see Dana. I looked around for him, but he just wasn’t there. The fire dept. lit a controlled fire outside the building, and our instructor, Page, came by and said, “Okay everyone listen up. There’s just been a terrible earthquake. People are trapped in the building and there are fires all over the place. Go.” Someone said, “Wait, where is Dana? He’s going to be our commander.” Another person said, “Hey, our Medical leader isn’t here either. We can’t begin without her.” Page yelled out, “People are now dying while you’re talking folks.”

I quickly realized what had happened. Page removed all our leaders and tucked them into the building as victims. She threw us into chaos as our command structure broke down instantly and we had no “leaders” to take charge. Someone said, “Who’s going to be in charge then? What are we going to do?” Before I knew what I was doing, I walked to the highest spot on the lawn in our group and raised my voice, “Listen up! Dana’s not here and we don’t have time to wait for him. You, over there, you’re going to be our Search and Rescue Leader. Stand over there. You, over there, you’re our Operations Leader, please stand right over here. Do I have a volunteer for Medical Leader?” A woman tentatively raised her hand. I said, “Great, please stand over there.” Everyone else, go stand behind the leader of your choice. They all moved. Someone yelled out, “Are you going to be our Incident Commander then?” I paused for a moment. I hadn’t even realized what I’d been doing. I just knew we had to get started and were wasting precious time so I started moving people into groups. So I said, “Uh yeah, I can do it until someone more qualified comes by to relieve me.” Inside I was thinking, “Shoot, I didn’t read up on what the Incident Commander does! I have no idea what to do here! How can I possibly be the commander?” Even though we had covered in class what an Incident Commander does, since I knew I was only going to be on the Search and Rescue team, I didn’t bother to brush up on it, so I had to recall information I’d learned weeks ago.

I turned to my Fire Suppression team because the fire was already going and I knew we had to get that out first before we could even enter into the building. I told them to engage the fire and put it out. Fire extinguishers were standing by so they went to handle that. Then I told my Search and Rescue leader to start assigning people in his group into teams. And I told my Medical leader to pick someone in her group for triage, transport, and morgue detail. I also told her where to set up her medical operations once we got inside and to create separate areas for triage, for victims whose injuries were delayed or minor, for victims whose injuries were life-threatening or immediate, and a morgue for victims who died on scene. By the time I was done, our fire crew had the fire out and we were ready to go into the building.

I knew our instructors had set many traps for us, and my most important goal and duty was to keep my CERT members alive. So we entered very cautiously, even though our urge was to rush in and start saving people. It took upwards of 5 to 10 minutes for the Search and Rescue teams to put their gear on (helmet, goggles, gloves, vest, flashlights), and for our Medical team to move chairs into circles for their various triage areas. The whole time our adrenaline was pumping. Even though we knew it was just a simulation, we were all on edge and in the moment. We didn’t want to screw up our final exam.

I realized that as the Incident Commander I had no one to tell me what to do. I had to make the final decision on everything. My operations team was running around the outside of the building putting out fires (under supervision of the real fire department) and turning off electricity and gas (simulated, not real). My medical team had no victims to treat so I turned my attention to Search and Rescue (S&R). Mark, my S&R leader, had two teams assembled. Before we sent them out, I reminded them not to go into any rooms where they smelled anything toxic or heard coughing coming from inside. The search teams went out and started searching rooms. I had to plant myself in a position so my S&R and Medical leaders could both see me. I can’t tell you how hard it was not to start running off to search rooms but to trust that our crews could manage the job.

One of our search teams didn’t come back to report in. Both Mark and I had to resist the urge to run down the hall to find out what happened to them. I had to grab a runner from Medical to gear up and go check. We told him to go down the hall, turn left and let us know if he could see the search and rescue team down the hall. But for some reason, he opened a door and went in by himself to look for the team. He was pronounced dead by our instructors. You never go in a room or building without a buddy. While we came to grips with our loss, I had to get another person from Medical into their search and rescue gear.

One lone team member came back from the original lost team to report that they had gone into a room where they smelled ammonia and heard coughing and she’d lost contact with her partner. Dead. We were all upset. After the warning I had just given them, they went and entered a toxic room. We’d lost another rescue worker. I felt like a failure and so did Mark and the lady who’d lost her partner. Two down and we hadn’t even found a victim yet! I was frustrated but we had to keep going. I had to grab more people from Medical to replace the lost search and rescue workers, leaving Medical with only two people to manage what should have been a 4 person team.

Meanwhile, our instructors turned off the lights in the hallway and now we were working in pitch black. I heard Page say, “I hope you all brought your flashlights…” in a sing-songing I-know-you-didn’t-bring-your-flashlights kind of way. Some of us did have our flashlights, thank goodness. Pretty soon one of our S&R teams found a victim. Dana. As they brought him in to Medical with “minor injuries” I shot him a look that basically said, “You could have warned me…” He just grinned evilly and went inside to be treated.

Bodies were piling up in the morgue: 3 dead, 1 injured. We had to find 2 more in the building somewhere. Our S&R teams were moving a lot more cautiously and slowly as they had already seen 2 of their own “die.” We found the last two victims and Medical took care of them. My Operations crew reported the building was now free of fires and electrical and gas hazards. The building was as secure as it could be, our search and rescue efforts were done, and Medical had all the injured (and dead) under control. The simulation was ended. It was way more intense than I expected it would be.

Our instructors then went over everything we did right and wrong. I was compelled to find the S&R member who walked into the toxic room and ask her, “Why did you go in there after I had just warned you not to? I’m curious.” She said, “I know, I know. But I heard people alive in there, coughing, and I figured I could just run in and get them and be out really quick.” In an intense, emotional, situation you don’t always think with your head but with your heart. That can get you killed in a disaster though.

There were accolades all around. When Page got to me she said, “How did Erin end up as the Incident Commander? Anyone know?” Someone said, “Because she stepped up when no one else would.” Page said, “That’s right! The Commander isn’t the person who is most qualified. It’s the person willing to take charge when no one else will. The person willing to take responsibility. How long do you think you would have been standing there, while people in the building were dying, if she hadn’t stepped up when she did? It took her only 10 seconds to assume command. All of you were just as qualified as she was, but none of the rest of you stepped up to the plate. Congratulations Erin on being a leader.”

I was proud of myself for taking command of the situation. I wouldn’t have done that a couple of years ago. I would have gladly waited for someone else to do it – not my problem, someone else can have that responsibility! But after consciously working on my leadership and command skills it was nice to see the Universe giving me a chance to exercise them. I was surprised no one else stepped up to take command though. Dana told me he’d read that in a disaster situation, 10% of the population is just going to break down, totally incapable of coping, 80% will be willing to be led, and 10% will step up into leadership positions.

My CERT disaster simulation showed me a side of myself I wasn’t sure was there. In the past, I wouldn’t have taken a leadership role because I couldn’t handle the responsibility of being wrong or making a mistake. Today I feel differently. I accept that as a leader I will make mistakes, but I’ll learn from them. I’m not afraid to fail anymore.

When was the last time you assumed a leadership position or took command of an urgent situation? How did you feel taking command? Are you comfortable with the mantle of leadership or are you content to let others make decisions that will affect your life?  Try cultivating command and leadership in your own life.  See what you’re made of.  See what you can get done.

Side note: CERT class is awesome – and FREE! It will help you prepare for disaster and learn how to do basic first aid and triage life-threatening injuries. I highly recommend it. You can find a course near you here.