BILLINGS — Emergency situations can be stressful, chaotic, and unpredictable. However, situations with mass casualties and/or pediatric patients can be even more demanding. That's why Thursday morning, first responders practiced for those situations at Billings Logan International Airport to ensure safety in the future.
It's a situation no one wants to see: kids in danger.
"Seeing it in person is different. It's really interesting," says Alana Heard, one of the pediatric volunteers.
Although the kids weren't actually in danger, they were treated as such.
"They did some pretty nice bruising. Some people actually got some pretty graphic head injures," says Heard.
Every year, local healthcare groups, including Billings Clinic and St. Vincent's, come together with first responders to practice mass casualty emergency situations. However, this year was different.
"This was the first year we introduced pediatric patients. Because, in real life, you're going to have adults, you're gonna have (pediatrics). So, being able to handle both pediatric patients and adults is very important," said Dr. Jamiee Belsky.
Belsky is the attending medical physician at Billings Clinic. It's her fifth year doing this training, and every year is different.
"You're never going to be perfect every time. If you bake a cake, there's always something different every time. These help us identify areas where we need more training, more work," she said.
This year, students from the Billings Career Center taking an EMT class participated in the drill. This time around, it was a simulation of a bus crash with 24 injured. Heard was one of them.
"It was really interesting. I'd say it was more like being able to observe the way first responders act in a sort of scenario like this," she said.
Heard is now a senior and hopes to become an emergency nurse after graduation. It's why she participated on Thursday.
"It's fun seeing how everything works," Heard said.
But at the end of the day, there's no way to completely prepare for those situations.
"We always want things to not go perfectly, so we find something to work on... I actually think that makes it a more realistic drill, because it's not always perfect in real life," says Belsky.
And according to Belsky, practice makes perfect.
