COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Emergency sirens wailed as rescue teams in hard hats picked through wreckage of a broken city. They peered beneath mangled cars, raked through splintered lumber and crawled under shattered concrete to seek out victims, several of whom bled from ghastly wounds.
Last week, it was a huge earthquake. But this quiet corner of East Texas has seen enough calamity to earn it a place in the Book of Revelation. Terror attacks, building collapses, tornadoes, hurricanes, fires — any disaster imaginable can and has happened here. That’s because the havoc was all, in fact, imaginary.
Welcome to Disaster City. This 52-acre installation on the campus of Texas A&M University is the world’s largest — and perhaps only — fake, destroyed town built for the sole purpose of training workers who save lives after mass-casualty events. Funded jointly by the federal government and state of Texas, the facility was founded to improve the realism of disaster training after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. It’s now a full-blown campus of calamity, holding classes in fallen buildings, fields of rubble and even a derailed train.
“It’s organized chaos,” said Anthony Gall, an Iowa first responder who last week attended the first international exercise held at the facility. “Everything from an earthquake to an explosive detonation ... they’ve tried to engineer it here.”
Teams from Belgium, Germany, Britain, Canada and the United States converged on Disaster City starting Oct. 24 for the school’s first-ever exercise dedicated to teaching rescue teams from different countries to work together smoothly on the scene of a single giant event.
In mega-sized cities, large-scale disasters have the potential to hurt more people than ever before, while the age of mass media allows news of the events to travel instantly around the globe. Teachers at Disaster City say the greater number of victims and greater awareness has ushered in an era of internationalized disaster response — with rescuers from scores of countries now responding to large events — and they say more training is needed to keep pace.
“Fatalities are increased, the number of victims is increased and it quickly overwhelms local, regional and national response systems,” said Chuck Jones, a regional rescue coordinator and lead instructor at last week’s exercise.
“I think what we’ve seen in the international community is the groups coming in from outside to help, they normally don’t work together,” Jones said. “They separate individually from the other groups that come in, maybe to their detriment. They sometimes end up trying to do too much with too little.”
At Disaster City last week, Jones said the gaps visiting teams learned to bridge were small but significant. When German rescue teams blast a whistle three times, for example, it’s a call for silence. They’re trying to better hear voices of buried victims, Jones said. For Americans, he said, three blasts from a horn or whistle means: clear out now, this area has become too dangerous to occupy.
Even among Anglophones, there were gaps of language — different names for tools and leadership roles and, of course, different slang. Ashley Johansen, 29, member of a rescue team from Alberta, Canada, said she received plenty of flak for her Canadian use of “eh.”
“There was some good-natured harassment,” she said. “We can harass them just as much, so it’s all good.”
International teams building rapport in non-emergency environment, Jones said, helps “reassure those people around the world that those other teams coming in to help really do know what they’re doing.”
Disaster City’s employees say their goal is making sure all students who pay $1,300 for a week of instruction at the school know what they’re doing. They say the best way to do that is by providing the most realistic disaster experience possible — down to the fake blood and guts on the volunteer victims.
“I’ve had people tell me, ‘OK, that’s really making me sick to my stomach,’ which is kind of a kudos to me.” said Stephanie Thompson, a Disaster City employee who creates many of the fake wounds, which are known as moulage. “I really like that.”
Last week, it was a huge earthquake. But this quiet corner of East Texas has seen enough calamity to earn it a place in the Book of Revelation. Terror attacks, building collapses, tornadoes, hurricanes, fires — any disaster imaginable can and has happened here. That’s because the havoc was all, in fact, imaginary.
Welcome to Disaster City. This 52-acre installation on the campus of Texas A&M University is the world’s largest — and perhaps only — fake, destroyed town built for the sole purpose of training workers who save lives after mass-casualty events. Funded jointly by the federal government and state of Texas, the facility was founded to improve the realism of disaster training after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. It’s now a full-blown campus of calamity, holding classes in fallen buildings, fields of rubble and even a derailed train.
“It’s organized chaos,” said Anthony Gall, an Iowa first responder who last week attended the first international exercise held at the facility. “Everything from an earthquake to an explosive detonation ... they’ve tried to engineer it here.”
Teams from Belgium, Germany, Britain, Canada and the United States converged on Disaster City starting Oct. 24 for the school’s first-ever exercise dedicated to teaching rescue teams from different countries to work together smoothly on the scene of a single giant event.
In mega-sized cities, large-scale disasters have the potential to hurt more people than ever before, while the age of mass media allows news of the events to travel instantly around the globe. Teachers at Disaster City say the greater number of victims and greater awareness has ushered in an era of internationalized disaster response — with rescuers from scores of countries now responding to large events — and they say more training is needed to keep pace.
“Fatalities are increased, the number of victims is increased and it quickly overwhelms local, regional and national response systems,” said Chuck Jones, a regional rescue coordinator and lead instructor at last week’s exercise.
“I think what we’ve seen in the international community is the groups coming in from outside to help, they normally don’t work together,” Jones said. “They separate individually from the other groups that come in, maybe to their detriment. They sometimes end up trying to do too much with too little.”
At Disaster City last week, Jones said the gaps visiting teams learned to bridge were small but significant. When German rescue teams blast a whistle three times, for example, it’s a call for silence. They’re trying to better hear voices of buried victims, Jones said. For Americans, he said, three blasts from a horn or whistle means: clear out now, this area has become too dangerous to occupy.
Even among Anglophones, there were gaps of language — different names for tools and leadership roles and, of course, different slang. Ashley Johansen, 29, member of a rescue team from Alberta, Canada, said she received plenty of flak for her Canadian use of “eh.”
“There was some good-natured harassment,” she said. “We can harass them just as much, so it’s all good.”
International teams building rapport in non-emergency environment, Jones said, helps “reassure those people around the world that those other teams coming in to help really do know what they’re doing.”
Disaster City’s employees say their goal is making sure all students who pay $1,300 for a week of instruction at the school know what they’re doing. They say the best way to do that is by providing the most realistic disaster experience possible — down to the fake blood and guts on the volunteer victims.
“I’ve had people tell me, ‘OK, that’s really making me sick to my stomach,’ which is kind of a kudos to me.” said Stephanie Thompson, a Disaster City employee who creates many of the fake wounds, which are known as moulage. “I really like that.”
