MOCK DISASTER DRILL AT UNIVERSITY

A tornado swept across the campus of Southeast Missouri State University on Monday, killing and injuring several.

Not really.

It was just a mock disaster, featuring fictional tornado damage created to test the emergency response training university employees received the past three years.

"This was a learning opportunity for the university as a whole," said Beth Cleaus, Southeast's emergency readiness plan coordinator.

Kent Library was closed Monday to serve as a practice site for search and rescue training. Eighteen people who completed a four-week training program known as CERT donned white helmets and large paper name tags to walk around the library's four stories looking for injured people.

CERT stands for Community Emergency Response Training, Cleaus said, which was developed by the Los Angeles County Fire Department after the 1985 Mexico City earthquake.

The training allows CERT members to systematically handle disaster situations for the first 72 hours after an event. During this time firefighters and other rescue personnel might be limited to respond to a widespread catastrophe, Cleaus said.

Southeast is one of three universities in the United States that has a CERT program for its employees, said Ann Hayes, a university spokeswoman.

During the drill, plastic dummies were placed throughout the library to simulate fatalities, and volunteers with latex enhanced injuries waited for rescuers to find them. Four makeup artists spent the morning creating various degrees of burns and bloody wounds on the volunteers.

As two rescuers helped her out of the library, Lori Vines hollered in pain from simulated puncture wounds to her stomach and leg.

Vines, a senior completing a degree in elementary education, had volunteered to be a victim at the suggestion of her husband, a university police officer. Although she had assisted injured people at car wrecks before, this was traumatic in a different way, Vines said.

"As I was lying there, I thought about the Oklahoma City bombing and what it had to have been like waiting for help," she said.

The rescue team encountered various injuries and obstacles. A woman trapped in an elevator called out for help over several minutes without a response. Others were lying underneath books and boxes that would have likely fallen during a tornado.

The CERT team moved as quickly as possible through the library, trying to find the injured, provide them with relief, and then continued searching for others. When rescuers found dummy fatalities, a piece of masking tape with the letter "D" was put on their heads so other team members would know.

"If a person is at a lesser threat level, they might be left for awhile," said Carson Kelly, assistant director of Southeast's Department of Public Safety.

Kelly led one of several groups of university employees on a tour of the disaster area. This gave more workers a chance to consider how they might handle an emergency in their own buildings, Cleaus said.

The simulation was more traumatic for CERT members, she said.

"They needed more time to talk about what they saw," Cleaus said, referring to a short debriefing after the drill. They will meet again today to discuss the training.

This exercise serves as a vehicle to assist the whole community, Cleaus said. Classes through the Cape Girardeau Fire Department for July and November have already filled up, so another is being offered in September.

"Today we saw how each individual's effort can play a part," Cleaus said. "We hope to expand on that."