Tuesday, March 31, 2009 5:15 AM CDT
Saturday morning was rainy and cold, but volunteers still gathered in O'Fallon Sports Park to play victims in a simulated plane crash.They were part of a Community Emergency Response Team, or CERT, exercise. CERT volunteers have checked on people whose utilities went out during an ice storm and have sandbagged during floods.
During this exercise, CERT volunteers were to locate and safely move victims and give basic first aid. CERT volunteers also were learning to contain a disaster scene, so people didn't wander in and disrupt lifesaving care.
Volunteer Karen Conner-Hatcher applied gory makeup to the "victims." She is not a professional makeup artist, but it is a high compliment to say her work looked ghastly.
Conner-Hatcher said the more realistic the makeup, the easier it is for CERT members to get into the event.
T.J. Miles, 11, of O'Fallon had a puckered slash on his face.
"I like wearing the makeup. It's fun," Miles said. "Some of the people here are really messed up.
"Miles mentioned a girl with sugar glass sticking out of her forehead. The girl, Hannah Puckett, 11, is a Central Elementary student whose mom is a CERT volunteer.
Puckett had posed as a victim for CERT trainings five times. On Saturday, her role was a fan of a celebrity also on the fake flight, played by 17-year-old Samantha Simms.
Puckett clutched a Photoshopped picture of Simms standing with "Twilight" film star Robert Pattinson. In the scenario, Puckett tried to get an autograph from Simms just as the plane was crashing because the pilot was drunk.
Miriam Hannibal, 17, and Jaime Nardi, 16, played siblings separated from their father. Nardi spoke little so she wouldn't disturb the burn makeup on her face.
Hannibal said they had taken their roles so seriously during previous CERT scenarios that people thought they'd actually been injured.
Both want to become actresses, and they got into character imagining what it would've been like on the plane before it crashed.
"It's just a matter of opening your eyes as a victim," Hannibal said.
The victims piled into a junked plane and sat on the ground covered in blue tarps. Their corn syrup blood pooled in the rain as the actors cried for loved ones. About 11 a.m., organizers called the victims back, few CERT volunteers were in sight, and the victims were in real peril of hypothermia.
"We would have been dead already. The plane crashed at 6:50," Puckett said.
O'Fallon police Detective Sgt. Robert Kendall said the weather brought the training to an early close, between 1 and 2 p.m.
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