Bloodied up for disaster lesson

Blood trickles down 11-year-old Hope Martin’s arm, staining her white T-shirt and streaking her leg as she bends down to tie her shoe.

She turns to her classmate John Paul Bottazzi, whose arms, legs and face are covered in white body paint, to ask for help. The sixth-graders begin to laugh.

“This is so cool. I look like I’m going to be on the next episode of ‘The Walking Dead,’” Bottazzi, 11, said with a grin.

The seemingly gruesome scene is how some College Park Elementary School students participated in the Great ShakeOut Thursday morning in Costa Mesa.

All Newport-Mesa Unified schools took part of the annual event, which is meant to encourage people to review their emergency-preparedness strategies in the event of an earthquake, said Principal Julie McCormick.

College Park staff and students puts on a production for one of their two emergency drills per year. This year, they enlisted the help of 12 students, all in sixth grade, who played the role of injured students during the 45-minute exercise.

“I think it prepares the staff and students better for the unforeseeable,” McCormick said. “This mixes it up a bit.”

Bottazzi is used to the annual evacuation, but said this year is more exciting participating as a “deceased student” actor.

“I’ve been wanting to do this ever since I saw a [fake] dead kid laying in the grass last year,” he said.

At exactly 10:17 a.m., McCormick alerted students over the loudspeaker that the drill was beginning and played sounds of an earthquake to expose students to noises they may hear in the event of an actual emergency.

Students in classrooms crawled under their desks until the sounds stopped and then filed out of the buildings, making their way toward the field, where they sat for the remainder of the drill.

Teachers and staff on designated search and rescue teams fanned out across the campus looking for injured students.

A teacher wheeled student-actor Joel Ramos, 11, to the first aid area at the picnic tables. He was pressing a wad of paper towels over his bloodied leg as another staff member approached him to inspect his fake injury. She removed the paper towels and exposed three plastic bones taped to his leg covered in fake blood.

“I was evacuating when something from the ceiling hit me and broke my leg and the bones came out,” he said.

Twenty minutes into the drill, the loudspeaker sounded again, this time to announce that the school was experiencing aftershocks and that everyone on campus must duck and cover.

This intentionally came as a surprise to teachers, staff and McCormick, said Carl Stone, a teacher who coordinates the disaster preparedness efforts at College Park.

“We’re making it more difficult each year to force students and teachers to adapt,” he said. “You never know what’s going to happen in an emergency. This activity is to test our weak spots.”

Once all 12 student-actors were accounted for, about 45 minutes after the initial earthquake, McCormick notified the district office and dismissed the students back to class.