30 ROUNDS

The first run: Our first aid instructors led us down to near the lake and left us there to ponder what was coming. Everyone was nervous. Everyone was silent. Whilst Henry McNaught was cowering in the bushes, a call came in through the radio – an explosion had occurred in the Watersports complex and several people were injured. Hurriedly, the team and I ran to the scene – clutching at our helmets, gasping under our breath at what we saw. An orange haze emerging from the shipping container, accompanied with the unnerving screaming of the bystanders left every one of the first aid trainees quivering. Entering the Site ,as IC, I commanded our team to split, with the team member’s furthest ahead attending to the casualties furthest from the entrance. I myself attended to a casualty with a gushing wound at the forearm. The casualty appeared to be around 18, Caucasian and male. Instantly I cleaned the wound and wrapped it with a bandage to help ease the pain the casualty was feeling – all the while comforting him and wrapping a blanket around him. I looked around for the stretcher – to help evacuate my casualty. Having found a stretcher we started evacuating the causalities – from the most accessible first to the least accessible. My casualty was evacuated first, whilst the casualty behind me was carried out on the arms of the members of my team The last to be evacuated was a member sandwiched between cinderblocks at the furthest point of the shipping container. Henry helped me place the casualty on the stretcher – gently. We successfully evacuated and treated all the casualties before the fire reached a critical point. The second run: In the second run through, the other team and my team united. We once again ran into the perilous area, confident and brave, having learned from our previous mistakes. We instantly evacuated everyone onto a mat placed at a safe distance from the danger. Once everyone was evacuated, we began treatment. Alan called the emergency services, providing detailed information about our whereabouts and the casualties injuries. How I felt it went: I was very happy with my team’s performance. Everyone was nervous going into the test, but my team remembered their training and worked well under pressure – (especially the bystander who screamed continuously even though it was clearly not helping). As Lt Caulfield mentioned, one of our biggest problems was (initially) we didn’t extract the casualties immediately. However we improved upon this in the second run through (in which the whole group worked together). We felt the second run-through went significantly smoother than the first.