Students informed on drunk driving

Last Thursday and Friday, the Jasper Fire Department, the Jasper RCMP detachment, Victims Services, nurses and Emergency Medical Services (EMS) all took part in the Prevent Alcohol Risk-related Trauma in You (PARTY) program for high school students at the Emergency Services Building. 

The primary goal of the PARTY program is to educate youth about the disastrous consequences that result from making poor decisions, especially with regards to drinking and driving. 

Students were taken through a mock motor vehicle accident in which a drunk driver was responsible and a fatality occurred. Fire Chief Greg Van Tighem explained that about 80 per cent of the calls they respond to are car accidents, not fires. Van Tighem is usually the first person at an accident scene, he said, and the first thing he does is “look at the severity of the injury, mechanism of injury on the victims” and then does “a quick assessment around the vehicle of the victims and the vehicle.”

When Van Tighem’s pager sounded, signaling the beginning of the demonstration, students exited the emergency services building to find a wrecked car, with some of their classmates in it playing the victims. The fire department, EMS and the police arrived on scene and began attending to victims, arresting the drunk driver and removing the roof of the destroyed car to gain access to the deceased. 

Students looked on as firefighters cut the roof from the car and the injured victim was strapped on a stretcher and loaded into the waiting ambulance. The deceased was loaded into a body bag and zipped shut. 

As the ambulance drove around the block, students moved back inside, to the mock hospital where nurses and paramedics provided treatment. After shocking the unresponsive victim multiple times with the defibrillator, she was pronounced dead. The drunk driver had survived and both her friends in the car had perished. 

After the near-real demo had been completed, students moved upstairs to the conference room for a variety of frank presentations on making good decisions to avoid the fate of the victims in the demonstration.

Paul Kennedy, operations manager for Associated Ambulance, showed slides of accident scenes with before and after pictures of the vehicles. Kennedy discussed in graphic detail what happens to victims of car accidents. In one of the slides, biohazard stickers were found around the inside of the vehicle. “The reason they put the stickers on there is so the tow truck driver knows that there’s biohazard materials in the car,” he said, while adding that, “in other words, his brain that splattered all over the inside of that vehicle.”

The point wasn’t to be gratuitous however. Kennedy discussed the impact that a fatal crash caused by a drunk driver can have for the families of the victims, the person who was at fault, as well as the responders, which in Jasper’s case are volunteer firefighters. 

Kennedy recounted for the students an accident scene he attended on Dec. 25, 1985. “The first thing I remember pulling up to the scene was Christmas presents all over the highway,” he said. Two children were in the back and survived, but their parents were killed by a drunk driver, who survived the ordeal. Not only did this incident have a direct affect on the surviving two children and the drunk driver who had two kids of his own, but on the first responders who awoke on Christmas Day to this tragedy. “You think every Christmas morning they don’t wake up and think about this?” Kennedy asked. 

Three nurses from Seton Hospital also spoke to the students explaining what they do, what they have seen and the importance of making good decisions. Kennedy also showed x-rays taken from injuries and passed around a fake brain for students to touch in order demonstrate the fragility of this most important organ. Kennedy concluded his remarks on a preventative note by stating that “we can try to prevent all that unnecessary suffering.”

Const. Erika Laird of the local RCMP took the floor to put some statistics to all this tragedy. Three thousand people die yearly on Canadian roadways and impaired driving related deaths account for 1,055 of those tragedies, she said. When compared with the fact that 500 people die annually from firearm related incidents, the students were able to put into perspective the deadly nature of drinking and driving. Laird emphasized not only “never drink and drive,” but that you should always wear a seatbelt. She also added that you should never “get in a vehicle with a drunk driver and never let a friend who’s been drinking drive.”

The most powerful presentation came from Derek Winters with the assistance of Paul Schmidt, Victim Services coordinator. Winters discussed in great detail and with tremendous candor, his drunk driving accident in which his best friend Pat was killed after being thrown 140 yards from the Jeep they were in. “One night we made a stupid decision,” said Winters, who lived in Jasper during his rehabilitation. 

Pat and Winters were not wearing seatbelts, had consumed a large amount of alcohol and were speeding at 140 km/h. “The police report was inconclusive,” said Winters, “they couldn’t tell who was driving.”

The incident occurred in September 2005. Winters spent about three weeks in a coma, had seven surgeries in the first five days in the hospital and “was paralyzed on the right side of my body for two months,” he said. Winters had a broken back, fractured neck and skull, went through 16 bodies worth of blood, lost a kidney, 40 per cent of his liver and 20 per cent of his colon and had to learn to walk and talk all over again. 

High school principal Mark Crozier said he believes that “it was a very powerful program and it’s nice to see the community sort of rally behind the safety of our youth and I think that as a team the message was very strongly put across. Students left that presentation I think with a lot of reflection and I think it’ll help in the safety of the youth in our community.” 

Demonstrators wanted to thank Jasper Towing for providing the vehicles.