photo by: Nick Krug

An emergency response crew member wearing a hazardous material suit helps an actor playing the part of a woman experiencing breathing troubles because of exposure to chemicals during a large-scale disaster training exercise on Thursday, June 18, 2015 at Lawrence Memorial Hospital.

It is settled: I’ll never do laundry again. After what I’ve seen today, I’d be a fool to.

You see, I’m kind of, sort of, a victim of a chlorine accident. I’m one of approximately 20 volunteers participating in a large emergency management exercise in which 10 public safety agencies are responding to a mock accident where chlorine gas has leaked into the air near 15th and Iowa streets.

Cheap old Chad — actually my name for the exercise is Sunset Fifty — was driving by in his pickup truck with the windows down because I wouldn’t turn on the air conditioner. And then, boom, I suck in chlorine gas and my lungs are burning, I have shortness of breath, and I point the F150 toward Lawrence Memorial Hospital.

photo by: Journal-World video

Journal-World reporter Chad Lawhorn pretends to have shortness of breath because of exposure to chemicals during a large-scale disaster training exercise on Thursday, June 18, 2015 at Lawrence Memorial Hospital.

I’m a lucky one. Several other “victims” had severe burns. When I reported to the volunteer area at the hospital at 8 a.m., I saw one of my bosses already there. Dan Simons, an executive here at the Journal-World, has part of his clothes torn off, a severe burn on his exposed shoulder and multiple burns elsewhere.

All from chlorine. And you expect me to go into a small laundry room where there’s a bottle of bleach on the shelf? I don’t think so.

In case you are confused about how Dan has burns on his body following a fake chemical accident, it is called moulage, an art that uses makeup to apply fake wounds to actors and others. The Douglas County Emergency Management team has volunteers who are skilled in the art of moulage. Dan’s a veteran of this stuff. He once was made up to look like a stick had impaled his throat following a mock tornado.

So a few burns are mild stuff, but it got my attention. For a moment, I forgot this wasn’t real and had a very concerned thought about my longtime boss: Is this going to affect my paycheck?

No, I’m just having some fun here because all of this is pretend, and I’ve been reminded of how much fun it is to pretend. But I’ve also learned something here: A little bit of pretend can help some people sleep better at night.

“There are so many things that keep me up at night,” says Teri Smith, director of Douglas County Emergency Management.

But when area agencies — everybody from law enforcement to fire and medical to mental health professionals — come together to participate in an exercise, Smith sleeps a little better. Today, she knows that everyone is better prepared to deal with a hazardous materials spill than they were the day before.

Lawrence emergency responders take part in disaster exercise

The exercise puts several systems to the test. Does the system used to alert on-call personnel work? Does everybody have access to the necessary radio channels? Has everybody thought through the logistics of running large numbers of people through the ER?

“Sometimes you find small stuff that you wouldn’t find otherwise,” says Kate Dinneen, a duty officer with Douglas County Emergency Management. “Like, you wouldn’t put that table in that spot because it fouls up the flow of something else.”

But one of the bigger benefits, longtime duty officer Bob Newton says, is that employees of different agencies get to work together in a situation where the stakes aren’t life and death.

“There were people here today that I didn’t know, but now I do know them, and that could be important when we are responding to a real event,” Newton says.

And there are so many real events that could happen. Local officials received an $80,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation, so that is why this scenario involved a truck that was transporting chlorine gas. But such a scenario is probably more likely than most of us would care to think, especially given the railroads and Interstate 70 that run through the community.

“There’s a significant amount of hazardous materials going through our community every day,” Smith says.

Smith and others in the business spend a lot of time thinking about situations much weirder than a crashed chemical truck.

“Some people think we have warped minds because we think of the worst case scenario,” Smith says. “But if you can plan for the worst case, you can manage the other scenarios that come up.”

Full scale scenarios happen about every two years. Some past ones have been a crop duster that accidentally dropped its load over a large group of people, a large-scale tornado, and one scenario that seems ready-made for the big screen. For some reason prisoners had to be transferred out of the Douglas County Jail. They were going to be temporally housed at the Douglas County Fairgrounds, but then a bus transporting the prisoners was involved in an accident.

Oh my, sometimes the twists and turns just keep coming in a disaster scenario.

There are a few in this one. Dinneen is briefing the group of volunteer victims, and asks if any of us know another language. One member of the group knows Swahili. She instructs the volunteer to speak Swahili when she enters the ER.

She tells others of us not to overact our parts. I don’t know why you are looking at me. She actually is talking to 19-year old volunteer Amanda Sharp, a KU student who hopes to go into the medical field. She was one of the handful of volunteers who went through the moulage station to get some fake wounds. She was hoping for even more than she got.

“I would have been fine with an arm hanging off, but I don’t know that they can do that,” she says.

Some roles have drama built into their parts. Tate Bremenkamp, a 20-year old KU student, is assigned the role of being the first patient to arrive at the hospital. He’s instructed to collapse outside the ER entrance.

Tate says the role was a lot of fun, but also eye-opening.

“Believe me, I hammed it up,” Tate says. “But it was startling to see the guys come out of the hospital in the big hazmat suits. It made you remember that this could be real someday.”

As for me, I spent a little time standing outside the entrance to the LMH emergency room breathing into a barf bag. Patients were triaged outside, and some who were exposed to the gas in significant quantities were required to go through a decontamination shower before they entered the hospital.

Whether it was luck or something else, chlorine gas was little match for me. LMH crews monitored my vitals, “gave” me some oxygen and some medicine for nausea and told me I would soon be feeling better. (I already knew I would soon be feeling better. Volunteers got free lunch in the LMH cafeteria.)

But I did my best to try to put the health professionals to the test. I decided that chlorine gas made Sunset Fifty a bit grumpy. I asked when the @$#& are we going to get inside the emergency room? I asked why the @$#& was someone driving around with this chlorine gas in the first place? And then came the nice registration lady who sought my address and other such information. That’s when it really hit me what Sunset Fifty’s big concern was.

“You’re not going to bill me for this? ” I ask. “I didn’t do this.”

Sunset is a little slow to the concept of natural disasters, acts of God and other things out of his control. Nonetheless, every great actor has to have a catch phrase, and I had found two: “I’m not paying for this,” and “I’m going to sue someone’s @$#&.” I may also have said something about never doing laundry again.

I’m happy to report that the staff handled it all very professionally. They checked on my well-being, and professionally ignored my ranting questions. It is almost like they had been to a training session hosted by my wife and kids.

Everybody I talked with was struck with the professionalism of those involved in the exercise. I was too, but that is not the thought that stuck with me the longest. I kept coming back to the idea that there are people — who for the good of this community — have to think about some awful things.

Let’s face it, it is difficult to even mention the possibility that a shooter will come to a Lawrence elementary school and do the unspeakable. But it can’t be unspoken if you are in the business of planning for disasters and tragedies. It has to be thought about, and in a lot of detail.

“I think most of us do this because we have a passion for it,” Smith says. “My passion is to make sure our community is resilient. We want to make sure that we can respond, and most importantly, recover from anything that happens.”

After watching the men and women in action, I know I feel better about it. There are a whole lot of us in Lawrence who are ready to be resilient.

Some of us, though, you may want to stand upwind of.

— Each Sunday, Lawhorn’s Lawrence focuses on the people, places or past of Lawrence and the surrounding area. If you have a story idea, send it to Chad at clawhorn@ljworld.com.