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By Christopher Vaughan I had third-degree burns on my hands, frostbite on my fingers, a neck injury, and lungs seared by ammonia. But my biggest worry was that my clothes were gone and no one knew where they ended up.As a "victim" participating in Stanford's ER during the disaster drill on Nov. 15, I knew what would happen generally, but as in a real crisis, I couldn't possibly anticipate details, which is the point of the exercise. For example, I hadn't realized how intimate it would be: I was playacting my injuries, but the doctors meant business when they pulled off my clothes, stuck electrodes on my chest and handled nearly every part of my body. My day as a victim began at 8 a.m. in the basement of Stanford Hospital, where a collection of other victims, including hardened veterans of previous disaster drills, gathered to learn their parts and prepare for, well, disaster. We learned the scenario - a truck filled with ammonia spilled its load after hitting a piece of construction equipment. I would play the role of the truck driver himself. A sheet of paper told me the extent of my injuries, and some makeup expertly applied to my arms made the burns look real.  It certainly looks real, but looks can be deceiving. Christopher Vaughan (left) was one of many volunteers who helped add a dose of reality to the recent hospital disaster drill at the medical center. My worries grew when the drill's director passed out orange armbands emblazoned with the words, "Disaster Victim." In the past, he said, pretend patients had been mistaken for real ones. "Put on the armband," I said to myself, imagining a tube being pushed down my throat. "Stick to the script." The "disaster" began at 9 a.m. Show time! As the truck driver, I presumably had ammonia splashed over my body, so the first thing the ER staff did was rush me to a portable shower. Into the spray I went, and off came my clothes, including the crucial protective armband I had been warned about, none of which I would see again until long after the drill had ended. I had been advised to wear a bathing suit under my clothes, but I hadn't anticipated that the overcast morning would be so chilly. The shower was supposed to be warm, but the water that had been sitting in the long hose connecting the nozzle to the hot water heater deep within the hospital had ample time to cool to a temperature suitable for a chilling beef. Out of the shower I emerged in all my pasty, goose-pimpled glory to greet the strobe flashes of a news photographer covering the drill. Hello world! Next, I was hustled into the triage line, where I was asked for a long-since lost form handed to me before I was submerged in the shower. Onward into the actual ER, where I was wrapped in mercifully warm blankets as the intense questioning, poking and prodding began. A helicopter pilot and flight nurse who also took part in the drill briefly discussed flying me to a burn center, but decided against it at the last moment. Instead, I was wheeled into an elevator and put up in a private room (perhaps one of the less realistic parts of the exercise) where I waited until the intercom signaled "drill over" at about 10 a.m. All that was left to do was slip on a gown and walk barefoot through the hospital in search of my clothes.
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Stanford Report, November 28, 2001
