Dirty bomb at Central High School in first-responder drill

Setting baseball field with 50 kids injured from gas and explosion

Mass casualties lay on the Central High School baseball field Tuesday morning.

Victims screamed in agony as emergency personnel scrambled to help, after a dirty bomb went off.

Thankfully all the victims were actors. It was an emergency response training exercise.

Emergency personel knew there was a drill Tuesday morning. What, exactly was going to befall those actors, however, they had no idea.

Keith Bulter, La Crosse County’s emergency management coordinator, describes the scene, as first-respondors arrived.

“They pulled up and saw 50 kids scattered all over a baseball field – some of them screaming,” Butler said. “We had manikins with severed limbs.

“They had to act out, as if they were in a real live situation.”

So, first-responders first took in that scene, before learning the cause.

“Somebody purposely detonated some sort of device that released a toxic gas,” Butler said, as the scene was simulating a baseball game. “(It injured) people because of the explosion, but also exposing people to a lot of gases that kill them that way, too.”

Like many crisis situations, they happen without warning, so agencies had no idea the situation would be outdoors, at a simulated baseball game or that a dirty bomb went off. 

“We actually had more patients with detailed fake wounds than we ever had in an exercise,” Butler said. “So, we know we gave responders really something to work hard to address.”

Agencies included local police, fire and EMS services. Gundersen Health System coordinated the event. Students with the Wisconsin Academy of Rural Medicine and the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health played the victims, complete with gashes and wounds.

It was all carefully staged and took just over an hour.

As for how everyone did, Butler says he thought the drill did the job.

Other scenarios in the past have included an active shooter at city hall, explosion at a school science lab and a hostage situation.