Seeing is believing, and when Woodland Christian High School students left their classrooms Thursday morning to witness the wreckage from a car accident, they believed.
Nearly 200 students watched from a nearby sidewalk as firefighters, paramedics and police officers responded to the “crash” scene where a total of seven students suffered injuries, and one student died as a result.
The “crash” was part of a simulation meant to open the eyes of students, teaching them about the dangers of drinking and driving.
There was no absence of tears among students in audience as they watched their peers being extracted from the two vehicles that collided on Matmor Road in front of their school.
While students outside prepared for the demonstration, getting last minutes coats of artificial blood before entering their respective vehicles, their classmates were inside, listening to a prerecorded 911 call made by a teen who witnessed the head-on collision — a collision, which claimed the life of one student, injured five others and landed one in jail for drunk driving.
The mock crash is just the beginning of a two-day event put on by the Every 15 Minutes program, an educational experience that reminds teenagers of the dangers associated with drunk driving.
The event is designed to dramatically instill teenagers with the potentially dangerous consequences of drinking alcohol and texting while driving. Every 15 minutes someone in the U.S. dies from an alcohol-related traffic collision.
“Kids think they are invincible,” said Jill Chandon, a Woodland Christian instructor. “They don’t realize the choices they make can impact themselves, their family, friends and others. Real life does have consequences.”
This is the third year Woodland Christian has participated in the Every 15 Minutes program, which has been “really affective” in educating students, Chandon added.
For Woodland Police Chaplain Matt Van Peursem, the program is “setting a platform for a dialogue between parents and students” about drunk driving. “It invites a conservation, which is good.”
For his role in the simulation, Van Peursem will be making mock notifications to family members throughout the day.
This is only his second time participating in the program — the first was last year’s demonstration at Woodland High School.
Two students, who were traveling in a Toyota Prius, encountered the accident, rushing to the scene to check on their fellow classmates while calling the police.
A “drunk” teen, who only suffered minor injuries, was behind the wheel of the white car. He was seen walking around the accident site as his passenger, who appeared unconscious for the entire demonstration, was pronounced dead. Firefighters covered his body, which crashed through the windshield, with a blanket, focusing on another passenger who cried out that he could not feel his legs.
California Highway Patrol officers placed the “drunk driver” in the backseat of their cruiser, where he watched firefighters and paramedics work to save one of his passengers, as well as the driver of the vehicle he hit.
Passengers from both vehicles who only suffered minor injuries also walked around the scene before sitting down on a nearby curb, comforting each other. One girl, who sustained a head injury, could not stop crying.
Each vehicle had an injured student who could not simply open the car door and walk out.
Instead, firefighters used the jaws-of-life on both vehicles, shattering glass and removing all four doors and the roof of each vehicle. Once they were free, the crash victims were removed and placed on stretchers — one was taken away in an ambulance, while the other was airlifted to Woodland Memorial Hospital by a REACH medical helicopter out of Vacaville.
With all injuries taken care of, a coroner started taking pictures of the deceased student before removing the body from the scene.
The demonstration concluded with a CHP officer asking the driver of the white sedan how much he had to drink before taking him through a number of sobriety tests, which he failed.
“You are under arrest for drunk driving,” he said before handcuffing the teen, putting him back in the cruiser, and taking him to jail.
Contact Sarah Dowling at 530-406-6234.
