S.A.F.E. - Stay Alive From Education

Joe McCluan, a paramedic from Orlando, Fla., told Marcus Jimenez, 15, of Shawnee what he will experience as a trauma victim while participating in a demonstration Wednesday at Shawnee Mission North High School. McCluan and Scott McIntyre tour the country as members of Florida’s SAFE (Stay Alive From Education) program.

Marcus Jimenez lay strapped to a paramedics board.

Two paramedics worked to save the 15-year-old’s life after he had slammed into the back of a parked cement truck in his station wagon.

Marcus was in bad shape with two collapsed lungs, broken legs and a shattered pelvis. Saving him would take a lot of painful maneuvering.

Everything could have been avoided if Marcus had worn his seat belt and had not driven home drunk after a party.

Luckily for Marcus, and about 80 of his classmates who watched the fake crash scene, this was all a demonstration to show teenagers the consequences of not wearing a seat belt and using drugs and alcohol.

Scott McIntyre and Joe McCluan, paramedics from Orlando, Fla., visited Shawnee Mission North High School on Wednesday. The trip was sponsored by the student group the DREAM (Decisions, Responsibility, Education, Action and Motivation) team and Crawford Sales Co., an Olathe-based Anheuser-Bush wholesaler. McIntyre and McCluan are members of Stay Alive From Education (SAFE), a non-profit organization of firefighters and paramedics in Miami-Dade County, Fla. The pair used demonstrations in addition to photographs of real trauma scenes.

But first, the men gave the students some simple instructions.

“We came here to show you the consequences. From there you make your own decisions.”

Scott McIntyre

“Don’t puke on your neighbor or me,” McIntyre said.

Then the photographs started flashing quickly, projected on a screen. Students and teachers shrieked, gasped and looked away as the paramedics went through images of dead bodies, bloodied and broken, wordlessly for five minutes. All the images were taken from crashes when the person was not wearing a seat belt.

“We did not come all the way from Florida to preach to you,” McIntyre said. “We came here to show you the consequences. … From there you make your own decisions.”

Trauma is the No. 1 killer of teenagers, they told the young crowd, and most of those they pull from car crashes are not wearing seat belts.

“Sounds pretty preventable,” McIntyre said.

The paramedics explained how injuries occur using Isaac Newton’s laws of motion. An egg, with the face of a girl squiggled on one side, represented a female student in the audience. McCluan placed the egg in a “car,” a cylindrical jar, and explained that according to the law of inertia because the student was driving her car at 45 miles per hour, her body was traveling at the same speed. And when her car rear-ended another, according to Newton’s third law – Splat! – all that was left of the egg was now its yolk.

Marcus said he thought students would respond to the presentation. Marcus was one of about a third of the audience who raised their hands when the paramedics asked who did not wear their seat belts every time.

“I’m just realizing how it would feel to be in a wreck,” he said after the presentation. “Now I know more and can be more wise in making my decisions.”

McCluan reminded the students before they left that vehicles are replaceable. People are not. Every 12 minutes someone dies from trauma.

“Every one of you has the answer,” McIntyre said. “The answer is common sense.”