Since Thursday, I have been in Oriskany (O-RIS-can-knee) New York, at the New York State Preparedness Training Center, doing moulage on willing victims for training purposes.
I'm in my usual post-event daze, made more intense by working under a professional moulage artist with twenty years experience. I learned how to make my injuries even better, how to work with plaster molds, latex and gelatin to make convincing wounds, and how to get wax wounds to stick (I work mostly in wax).
Hope exercises (Missouri Hope, New York Hope, Atlantic Hope and the new ones coming down the pike) are intense. The participants are assigned to teams, and the teams work to solve problems in search and rescue, triage and first aid, and incident command. They are placed in realistic scenarios and have to solve them on the spot. Complications thrown into the scenarios make the participants think on their feet.
There are at least as many staff members as participants -- team controller/evaluators, who advise the participant teams, lane controller/evaluators, who run the scenario lanes, logistics personnel, subject matter experts, exercise director and staff, roleplayers --
And the moulage staff, who are looked at with a certain awe.
I'm bone-tired. It's been an intense couple of days, which I wouldn't trade for anything, because they've given me the opportunity to improve. I'm not sure if I'm making any sense here; I hope so. Thanks for reading.
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