Baldwin High School junior D.J. Foston has a new excuse for missing classes today — he’s dead. Fortunately for him, it’s all just a drill.

“I went to the Emergency Department and I died because it took too long for me to be registered. They ended up sending me to the morgue,” Foston said.

Foston, who received a “head injury,” was one of 36 students from John Milledge Academy, Baldwin High School and Georgia Military College who became “patients” Tuesday morning as Oconee Regional Medical Center participated in a regional disaster drill exercise based on results of the region’s Hazardous Vulnerability Analysis, which rates severe weather and tornados as a high risk for the Central Georgia area.

Jasper Memorial Hospital, Fairview Park Hospital, Taylor Regional Hospital and Bleckley County Hospital also participated in the drill, which lasted around four hours Tuesday morning.

“It seemed to go very well. We had evaluators from pubic health, EMA and the University of Georgia. They were watching our staff perform according to our emergency plans,” Jana Gilliand, ORMC Emergency Preparedness coordinator, said. “We learned that there is a lot of technology available to help us interact with our community partners for Web-based communication systems.”

Communication and care were two of the main focuses of the disaster training drill, which had a series of mock tornados touch down in the counties covered by the participating hospitals.

ORMC had to deal with “damage” to the Park Tower facility, the “walking wounded,” an overwhelmed emergency department due to a strong influx of “patients” in a short period of time, “family members” searching for relatives, “media representatives” searching for information, “strangers” walking the halls, non-English speaking patients, a retired doctor trying to do his part to help and even a nicknamed “Cat Lady” as part of the simulation.

“I thought that it went good. I’ve worked with the Department of Corrections in the past, and anytime there is an incident there is a lot of coordination that has to be done and it seemed like they [ORMC] were on top of the planning,” Garland Riner, a GMC teacher and coach who played retired “Dr. Smith” for Tuesday’s scenario, said. “From what I saw, they exchanged information well. Everyone was polite but firm and very knowledgeable about the facility. Being a ‘doctor,’ I wanted to make my way up to the ICC Department, but had to get my credentials verified before I could do anything official.”

“Dr. Smith” was sent to human resources — a slightly better fate than Shawn “Inquiring Mind” Hollis, whose job was to wander the hallways and corridors and simply “see what happens,” according to Matt Dietz, security captain with ORMC and one of the volunteer coordinators at ORMC for Tuesday’s disaster drill.

Hollis eventually found himself arrested by Lt. Judy Theocharides of the Milledgeville Police Department, but not before he was able to enter the E.D. and obtain the names, ages and injury reports from three different “patients” waiting for triage.

“The E.D. has a great system and performed wonderfully. We had a report from the E.D. management that as long as they kept focus between the “real” and “fake” patients, that things went well,” Gilliand said.

Percy Canon, 17, from Georgia Military College Prep stepped into the shoes of a Union-Recorder reporter for the morning and found out first-hand what it was like to be a member of the media when disasters strike.

“It went pretty good. I’d say that they did their job. Security was a little lax if you didn’t try the main areas and went in the back way,” Canon said. “I didn’t know I was going to be a reporter. I learned a little more about HIPA [Health Information Privacy Act of 1999], and a few of the security guards stopped me and the police officers told me I’d have to wait somewhere else.”

BHS freshman Danielle Devane, 15, found herself in a rather uncomfortable position as a simulated patient with a bad leg injury.

“I was a walk-in for the E.R. I had a four-inch piece of bone stuck in my leg. First the security guard asked me what was wrong and then the nurses station got my information. They put me on a bench and got some more information. It didn’t take very long. I was basically in and out,” Devane said. “The nurses were really good, except when Inquiring Mind came in. That caused some trouble, and they had to get things under control.”

Such surprise situations are what people such as Gilliand and others were hoping to see. By learning where weaknesses or strengths were located, ORMC — and the other four hospitals involved — will be able to better prepare for the real-life disasters.

“I think it went pretty well. Some of the feedback that I heard was that it went more smoothly than last time,” Dietz said.

Gilliand was hesitant to provide specific areas of where ORMC will examine for weaknesses or strengths, but did admit that communication, while strong, “We want to improve methods of communication between units and are considering buying some radios to use.”

In examining communication between the various hospitals, everything seemed to go well, according to Nathaniel Weiss, CEO of LiveProcess, the New Jersey-based company hired to ensure continual communication between emergency personnel among the hospitals.

“I was stationed at the Command Center making sure the software and communication between hospitals was working well. It really came down to the people. They were really collaborative. It’s refreshing to see a group of hospitals want to work together to solve a very important problem,” Weiss said.