Police officers, VT Rescue Squad members and fire fighters will be in attendance at the mock DUI by the Drillfield, Thursday, Sept. 2.
Don’t be alarmed by the flashing lights Thursday on the Drillfield. It will just be the Virginia Tech rescue squad, in conjunction with Virginia Tech Police and the Blacksburg Fire Department, staging a mock DUI car crash.
Part training exercise and part public awareness event, the mock crash will serve to both test VT Rescue’s level of training and preparedness, as well as show students the end result of drinking while driving.
“I think most people are aware of the end result of drunk driving, but some people just don’t care” said Mike Sty, a junior industrial and systems engineering major.
VT Rescue seeks to combat both ignorance and apathy this week by staging the mock crash, which will simulate exactly how the police, fire department and VT Rescue would respond to a real one.
Kimberly Heald, VT Rescue president and junior spanish and business major, explained how the entire event will occur. Two wrecked cars will be placed at the lower end of the Drillfield near the Duck Pond. Each participating agency will arrive and begin its role. The police will arrest the actor portraying the drunk driver, while the rescue squad and fire department extract the victims and perform triage.
In order to simulate a real crash as closely as possible, VT Rescue will be using all of the equipment they would normally use. This means they will be using heavy equipment like hydraulic rescue tools, more commonly known as the “Jaws of Life,” to cut the damaged cars open.
Carilion will be providing a helicopter not only to simulate the possibility of severe injuries requiring air transport to a hospital, but also to attract attention of students around campus. There will be a narrator on hand to explain what is happening to any passerbys as part of the effort to promote community involvement and awareness.
“We want to show that this is a real possibility,” Heald said. “We also want to get the community involved in how to respond.”
Heald said Blacksburg is lucky that DUI crashes are rare, but noted the problem is always present.
“Alcohol is always a problem in a number of cases, but it is not a worse problem in Blacksburg when compared to other areas,” Heald said.
The annual mock crash aims to make students think twice before getting into a car intoxicated.
“I remember last year people were walking by and would ask what we were doing. We would tell them that this was the result of a DUI,” said Johnathan Sorah, a junior biochemistry major and VT Rescue member. “We want them to say, ‘Maybe I should think before I get into a car drunk.’”
Sorah said since VT Rescue deals with on-campus emergencies, many of the calls they field involve alcohol poisoning or vomiting, although he added that the majority of Tech students do not seem to have an alcohol problem.
The VT Rescue Squad hopes to continue displaying the carnage that can result from driving while intoxicated.
A version of this article appeared in the Aug 31 issue of the Collegiate Times.
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Passerbys is not a word. The correct word is passersby. In fact Microsoft Word as well as my web browser insist it is not with the ugly red underline. Please use spell check next time. Mistakes like this are offensive to me, as it shows the public that Virginia Tech students are not informed of correct grammar.
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Oh good grief! Uptight is also a word; I'm certain it was a simple mistake. Everyone makes them from time to time.
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Sure, everyone makes mistakes; but not everyone publishes them in a newspaper.
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Anon and the guy who started this thread are both right. Sometimes the CT can be so clearly irresponsible in what they publish. I demand that the quality of this paper be elevated. I don’t read an amateur college newspaper so that there will be mistakes THAT’S WHY I HAVE THE WASHINGTON POST. I’m sure that both Anon and the other dude were shocked to see a misspelled word, clearly they don’t spend their time reading this paper in the hopes of finding a mistake which they can whine about while overlooking things like the content or the fact that its a college newspaper in college with college students who are probably from different majors in college. I’m sure that they would both agree that the people at the CT need to put more effort into the paper then what they are doing presently. If they’re going to work for the paper, it should be their main concern. Not classes, not tests, or projects, or some semblance of a social life. The only thing that this small staff of students who work around the clock to put out this paper for you ungrateful dip----s should focus on is the paper. Maybe instead of complaining about it – in any form – you should actually go and volunteer to try and make it a better paper instead of sitting on a computer getting your rocks off to the fact that a college newspaper misspelled a word wrong.
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I JUST REALIZED I HAD GRAMMATICAL ERRORS IN THAT RESPONSE. WHAT AM I? A COLLEGE NEWSPAPER?
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I can assure you that the majority of the public doesn't really care if a word is not spelled correctly. This is a great thing that Carilion and VT are doing, and should not be over shadowed by your offense of their use of grammar. Get a life.... everyone of us uses bad grammar, college graduate or not! You should be much more offended by the wreckless activities of those college students that are learning to use correct grammar while they are driving drunk?
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