Students learn how to save lives at Alamance-Burlington School System’s first responders camp

GRAHAM, N.C. (WGHP) — It looks like the scene of a car crash.

The first responders are using heavy equipment to try and save a life. In the distance, you can hear a Carolina Air Care helicopter landing, ready to airlift a patient for treatment. But it’s not an active scene, but rather, middle school students in Alamance-Burlington School’s future first responders camp.

For 8th grader Elainea Daves, much of what she saw was a surprise.

“It’s really cool ’cause I’ve never seen that before and I think it’s like cool to see everything that’s going on how it is, like in a real world, what it’s like to be a paramedic and a police and a firefighter,” she said.

Her classmate Savannah Crabtree agrees.

She said, “I think it was cool seeing them take off the door with the big claw thing. That was really cool because like you wouldn’t expect it to be that powerful to just like pry off a metal door.”

“I thought it was pretty cool because we got to get in the helicopter and we got to explore all the different public safety jobs,” 7th grader Demarion Vincent said.

Graham High School teacher and EMT Madison Piece says that is the purpose of this camp. She wants to get students excited about the different first responder careers and show them there are many different pathways to their futures.

“So somebody who might say, hey, you know I want to be a police officer when I grow up,” says Pierce. “They kind of saw what happened out there and it kind of could change their mind. Like I really like to see what EMS did or I really want to be on a helicopter one day or you know, it just kind of gives them that one that experience to say, hey, this is what I thought they did, but it was actually very different than what I thought.”

Exposing them in middle school helps them plan for their classes in high school. Pierce says they start with the basics in Public Safety 1.

“They take public safety 2, which gives you your search certification, which is a community emergency response team. So, search and rescue think natural disaster. If a natural disaster hit Alamance County, these students, after they get their certification, they can actually go out and do search and rescue debris pickup if there’s like a tornado or any type of first responder volunteer service. So, they’ll get that and they’ll also get their NECI basic 911 dispatch certification. So, we have our dispatch center kind of set up here for show now. But what it is, it gives them a kind of a one up,” she said.

At this camp, there are lots of surprises, not just for the campers, but the first responders too.

According to Pierce, “This is the fourth time we’ve held this camp, so the fourth time we’ve done this scenario and each time the scenarios had the same gist, but it’s been a little bit different. We do our safety briefing away from the actual scenario. So that way that it’s realistic for our first responders as well, they’re not, they don’t know what they’re coming into. I mean, they know it’s a car wreck, but they don’t know the magnitude of it. So I like to kind of keep it a surprise for them too.”

That way the students see and feel the raw energy.

“It makes me more interested than I was before. Definitely cause I just like know a little bit more, just like, oh, I want more, ” said Crabtree.

All the action was defintely an eye-opener for them.

Vincent said, “I want to learn about how to be a firefighter because I feel like that’s what I might become when I get older.”

Daves said she would definitely recommend the camp to other students.

“I think it’s good that kids come to this camp where they can learn what they want and if they want to become a paramedic, they can learn from experience what they’ve accomplished here. They can learn about that,” she said.

The first responders volunteer their time to help their profession grow in the future.

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