News & Events

The earthquake was fake but not the reactions of the students, in the co-curricular ‘Disaster Squad’ trained to treat them. The medical staging area was a classroom with 14 different victims that needed triage and treatment. Squad members were timed on how fast they could assess the injuries and tag the victims with a card showing their medical emergency level.

The students, who meet each Day 6 of a cycle, receive training in First Aid, how to apply CPR (Cardiac Pulmonary Resuscitation) and provide emergency medical assistance. The class is led by the upper school nurse Nada Halawi and every year she plans several disaster scenarios for the students. She recruits volunteers to play the victims, assigning them a character and briefing them about what physical complaints their character could have. Special effect make-up by Isabella Badaoui gives the victims a more realistic look and helps the Disaster Squad assess injuries from afar. Throughout the school year the ‘Disaster Squad’ can be seen offering medical assistance at community events on campus and at school games. Nurse Nada said “many of these students put in long hours and spend a lot of time serving at events. They generally have an interest in science and some of them go on to study medicine.” This ‘disaster’ had a happy ending for the victims as well as the students learning to serve their community.