NEWPORT BEACH : Film Makers to Show Medical Art of Triage

Sitting in the driver’s seat of a smashed car, Julie Messina, 24, laid her bloodied head on the steering wheel and closed her eyes.

Next to her, a semiconscious 13-year-old, Tom Perschler, reclined in the passenger seat and hung his arm limply at his side.

As the first Newport Beach fire engine arrived at the scene on Avocado Avenue, three firefighters closed in on the mangled car and an overturned bus full of victims.

And then it was over.

Messina and Perschler opened their eyes, the firefighters left the scene and the cameras stopped rolling.

This dramatic scene was repeated several times Friday to simulate a disaster for a training video about emergency triage being made by Hoag Hospital and the Newport Beach Fire Department.

On the blocked-off street, officials used a car which had been in a real head-on collision and positioned it next to an aging passenger bus purposely overturned with a forklift. Several local firefighters and one police officer, as well as 30 “extras” in ripped clothing and theatrical smoke-making machines, added touches of realism.

The film, which will cost about $35,000, was shot scene by scene throughout the day. After being edited, it will be distributed worldwide by Hoag Hospital.

Triage is a 30-second procedure paramedics and firefighters use for assigning medical priority to injured persons according to a number of factors, such as consciousness, respiration and circulation. The crucial portion of the video will show a firefighter wearing a helmet-mounted camera entering a bus full of bloody victims and tagging those who need immediate treatment.

“You don’t have to be a doctor to do this,” said Vickie Cleary, a registered nurse at the Fire Department. “Firefighters are usually the first on the scene anyway.”

A similar video, used in several countries, was made 10 years ago when Cleary was a nurse at Hoag Hospital.

The new video will show rescuers wearing rubber gloves and paying more attention to the prevention of infections, Cleary said.

The film is to be completed by the end of the year.