A Better View

It was late and and I was tired. The lecture had droned on and I had missed several key points. I wasn’t going to be much help to my assigned search and rescue team. I wasn’t excited about signing up for the CERT training but since I had been assigned to oversee the recruitment and I had the responsibility to open up the building and secure it when the training was done, I decided that it made as much sense to participate in the training and be in a better position to help in the event of a real emergency.

My workday had been busy with intense cases almost all day long. I had dealt with enough emotional tragedy during the day that the thought of working through staged responses to a natural disaster was more than I wanted, so I simply zoned out. After the lecture we finally divided into teams and were instructed to conduct a complete search of one section of the building where they had set it up like an earthquake disaster.

We entered the first room as a team and began our search using a counter-clockwise pattern. I hadn’t paid attention so I got myself in the third position of the four-person crew and just followed the lead of the person in front of me. There were no lights other than those we brought with us. Once our eyes adjusted we started moving around the room and we were calling out everything that we could see, wounded, dead, other dangers and confirming them with our scribe to avoid duplicate reporting, and staying together so we didn’t become victims ourselves.

We moved through the room more quickly than any other group and were self-congratulatory as we finished. We were working against a clock because, in any disaster, time is of the essence if you want to save a life. When you are in assessment mode you need to move even more quickly because if you stop and save the first person you encounter, you might spend two hours and save a life, but your delay might cost the lives of dozens or more because you failed to move into the next room.

When we got debriefed we learned we probably wouldn’t have left the first room alive. While we did a great job identifying the risks in front of us and on the ground, we completely missed the dangers they had created above our heads. We were so focussed on what was in front that none of us bothered to assess the safety and stability of the ceiling above us before we entered the unlit room. They said the first room was set up such that the only way to pass the test was to not enter the room, but just report the instability.

We missed the danger because we failed to look up. That has always reminded me of the need to seek a higher perspective whenever we are assessing the risks to our circumstance.