Last week I found myself sprawled beside a wrecked gasoline tanker, my arms and head covered in third-degree burns, blood dripping down my nose and glass shrapnel buried in my back. Meanwhile, a pregnant teenager across the road was going into labor. And then the lightning started. My adventure had begun at 7:45 a.m. last Friday in the parking lot of Mount Mansfield Union High School in Jericho. There I joined 19 other volunteers participating in the first day of Vigilant Guard. The 10-day, $570,000 exercise is the largest mass-casualty drill ever held in Vermont. It involves more than 5,000 participants from more than two dozen federal, state and local agencies, including Vermont's Army and Air National Guards, 16 area hospitals, the Department of Homeland Security, the American Red Cross, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Our jobs would be to serve as mock casualties, complete with makeup, costumes, prosthetics and acting parts, all of which help simulate the gory realism of an actual disaster. It's one thing for emergency responders to role-play a single-site disaster using mannequins. It's quite another to stress-test them with multiple scenes of mayhem spread over miles, each populated by actors outfitted with authentic-looking wounds and howling in pain. My group was an eclectic mix of local thespians, comedians, makeup artists, high school and college students, volunteer firefighters, and retired military vets. Some had read about the job on Craigslist, others in the Seven Days story I wrote several weeks ago about E-9, the Colorado Springs, Colo., company contracted by the feds to provide logistical support to Vigilant Guard. E-9 works these federally mandated drills all over the country and pays its extras well. While we waited, one woman yawned. "I'm not a morning person," she said sleepily. "For 80 bucks and zombie makeup, I am," countered Nichole Magoon, a Champlain College staffer who does improv at the Vermont Comedy Club in Burlington. "I'm kind of hoping for my intestines to hang out." At 8 a.m., a white cargo van pulled up, and out climbed Paul Ghiozzi and Charlie Vasseur, both with E-9. The two knew each other in the U.S. Marine Corps and served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. I'd interviewed Ghiozzi, a '96 Norwich University grad now living in Las Vegas, a few weeks ago by phone. He greeted me with a smile and firm handshake. Ghiozzi wore…
Last week I found myself sprawled beside a wrecked gasoline tanker, my arms and head covered in third-degree burns, blood dripping down my nose and glass shrapnel buried in my back. Meanwhile, a pregnant teenager across the road was going into labor. And then the lightning started. My adventure had begun at 7:45 a.m. last Friday in the parking lot of Mount Mansfield Union High School in Jericho. There I joined 19 other volunteers participating in the first day of Vigilant Guard. The 10-day, $570,000 exercise is the largest mass-casualty drill ever held in Vermont. It involves more than 5,000 participants from more than two dozen federal, state and local agencies, including Vermont's Army and Air National Guards, 16 area hospitals, the Department of Homeland Security, the American Red Cross, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Our jobs would be to serve as mock casualties, complete with makeup, costumes, prosthetics and acting parts, all of which help simulate the gory realism of an actual disaster. It's one thing for emergency responders to role-play a single-site disaster using mannequins. It's quite another to stress-test them with multiple scenes of mayhem spread over miles, each populated by actors outfitted with authentic-looking wounds and howling in pain. My group was an eclectic mix of local thespians, comedians, makeup artists, high school and college students, volunteer firefighters, and retired military vets. Some had read about the job on Craigslist, others in the Seven Days story I wrote several weeks ago about E-9, the Colorado Springs, Colo., company contracted by the feds to provide logistical support to Vigilant Guard. E-9 works these federally mandated drills all over the country and pays its extras well. While we waited, one woman yawned. "I'm not a morning person," she said sleepily. "For 80 bucks and zombie makeup, I am," countered Nichole Magoon, a Champlain College staffer who does improv at the Vermont Comedy Club in Burlington. "I'm kind of hoping for my intestines to hang out." At 8 a.m., a white cargo van pulled up, and out climbed Paul Ghiozzi and Charlie Vasseur, both with E-9. The two knew each other in the U.S. Marine Corps and served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. I'd interviewed Ghiozzi, a '96 Norwich University grad now living in Las Vegas, a few weeks ago by phone. He greeted me with a smile and firm handshake. Ghiozzi wore…