Firefighters Practice at Staged Car Crash

The Ventura County Fire Department staged a head-on collision at Camarillo Airport Tuesday so firefighters could practice freeing victims trapped in their cars.

“Our main objective in staging the accident is to prepare us to care for victims,” said Norman Plott, public information officer for the Ventura County Fire Department.

Department clerical workers and dispatchers acted as passengers, and dummies were used to portray the two drivers. The cars were donated by a school. The blood was merely makeup.

According to the scenario, five people traveling east in a white Dodge van collided head-on with four people in a 1967 Dodge Aspen that veered from its course.

After the collision, the van tossed the dummy driver out the window and toppled into a ditch. It came to rest on its side, on top of the driver, who was later determined to be dead from massive chest trauma.

Another passenger lay in the ditch where she had fallen from the vehicle.

Four people, including a drunk driver blamed for the accident and a woman six weeks pregnant, were trapped in the Aspen.

The 25 firefighters who responded treated the situation as a real emergency.

Within an hour they had freed all four victims from the Aspen, using a tool called the “jaws of life” to peel open the steel doors and fold back the car roof.

Some firefighters worked to lift the van so they could free the man trapped beneath it. Others treated victims who had been released from the vehicles and determined who should be taken to the hospital first.

Perhaps the most difficult job, though, fell to the firefighters trying to calm Paula Aliano, a dispatcher told to play the part of a belligerent woman distraught that her husband was pinned under the van.