After the training, the event culminated in ‘‘Tornado Alley,” a program in which the boys had to use their new skills to deal with a simulated disaster. The ‘‘Alley,” which was set up in a dark Middletown Primary School hallway, required the boys to crawl through a long wooden tunnel representing a building hit by a tornado, and to make disaster response decisions as they found their ways to the exit.
Self-rescue techniques teach that if one cannot help a person quickly without further endangering themselves, it is better to continue onward to help others and to escape, and to then alert professionals to the person stuck inside.
As such, in Tornado Alley, the scouts were confronted by a person pretending to be stuck under a pipe that was too heavy to move. They were supposed to use their new knowledge and tell the person that they would send help, and then continue onward.
‘‘Earlier they said only help the people you can help. I couldn’t help her because the pipe was too heavy,” Gordon said after escaping from Tornado Alley.
The boys took great pride in their newfound expertise, and were excited to talk about it.
‘‘It’s really cool because you never know when there’s going to be an emergency,” said 13-year-old First Class Scout Robby Friscia of Troop 268. ‘‘People can tell you what it’s like to be in an emergency, but you can’t beat experience. You feel more comfortable knowing exactly how to handle it when you have experience.”
The event, which took place at the Middletown Carnival Grounds, centered on this real-life training. The training was facilitated in part by Community Emergency Response Team (CERT), a Federal Emergency Management Agency program which serves to educate citizens about emergency preparedness. It was also spearheaded by local volunteer fire departments including those based in Middletown, Myersville, Braddock Heights and Jefferson.
Saturday’s activities ended with a nighttime campfire accompanied by the song “Amazing Grace,” which was performed by a scout leader as a tribute to firefighters and emergency personnel who have lost their lives in service.
