Meet the real life crash test dummy who has been in 19 plane crashes - but never broken a bone.
Torrential rain lashes down as firefighters battle freezing temperatures, determined to free a woman from the wreckage of her car, which is wedged upside down in a ditch. Covered in blood and trapped by her seatbelt, she knows her vehicle could explode at any moment. She screams, her face just inches from the metal roof, as the emergency responders cut her free.
But, despite her perilous situation, she is not frightened at all. This is the 63rd time Sarah Martin, 35, has been cut out of a car – and it’s not down to bad luck or terrible driving. She is a volunteer for the Casualties Union, a charity that helps to train our emergency services.
Sarah is basically a living, breathing crash test dummy. Once freed, she is strapped to a stretcher and carried to the roadside, to a waiting ambulance. There, she stands up and accepts a cup of tea from a deathly-pale man who was mid-heart attack moments ago – a fellow volunteer.
Sarah and her pal are two of the hundreds of volunteers who pose as injured – or even deceased – members of the public in some of the most frightening and testing scenarios emergency responders are likely to encounter in the line of duty. Their work is invaluable in helping to prepare these heroic men and women for the disasters they will face as part of their jobs.
Sarah, a railway signaller, was first told about the Casualties Union by her lecturer when she studied transport management at university, and was inspired to volunteer. She says: “I found it all completely fascinating, from seeing how the injuries are created to being allowed ‘behind the scenes’ at an accident. The first exercise I did was an aeroplane evacuation – it was terrifying but I was hooked.”
Sarah now runs the Surrey branch and as part of her role-playing she has been in 25 fires and 19 plane crashes, been stabbed, shot, knocked off her bike by a car, and has “broken” every bone in her body. “I’ve survived more pelvic fractures than I care to remember,” she laughs. “Amazingly, I’ve never broken a bone in real life.
“Volunteering gives you an appreciation for the work the emergency services do and just how terrifying it must be to be caught up in an accident for real. People might think it would be difficult to pretend you’re really injured. But, when the emergency services arrive, it really does all feel very real and everyone takes it extremely seriously. The scenarios are always so varied. You name it, I’ve been rescued from it!”
And her volunteering means she is far less fearful than most about ending up in a real emergency. She says: “It’s reassuring to see what an amazing job all the emergency services do. Sometimes, we’ll be in cars piled up and it’s so difficult to see how they’ll find a way out, but they do.
“In fact, it’s sometimes more difficult to find my way in, so I can do my role playing. I often have to crawl in through the boot!”
The Casualties Union was founded in 1940 to train the emergency services to rescue victims from bomb-damaged buildings during the Blitz. When the war ended, medical advisors urged the charity to continue to train people in peace-time first aid. Now, it has volunteers aged 18 to 82 attached to its 20 branches in England and Wales. Many are actors, make-up artists or health workers, and help to train each other to create scenes.
“We all work together to learn how to construct a realistic scene,” Sarah says. “The people with a medical background train us in how someone with a specific injury or condition might act, or what symptoms they might have. And the make-up artists do an amazing job, showing us how to perfect the look of really realistic injuries. I can create a mean-looking burn or broken bone now.”
But the scenes they create can look so realistic they have to be careful not to provoke panic. Sarah, who lives with her partner in Basingstoke, Hants, says: “We have to be very careful about any pictures we post on social media, in case people see them and think there’s been a real disaster.” The extent to which they go to create the atmosphere of a real-life disaster amazes people she tells.
“People are often surprised and assume emergency services only train with weighted dummies,” she says. But we get so much feedback saying how training with real people helps the responders become better at their jobs. Firefighters might know exactly how to operate cutting machinery in the fire station but it’s different doing it when there’s a scared person in the car, who might be screaming in pain or with fear.
“They learn how to speak to people, in order to calm them down, while they’re still doing their job. It’s a totally different skill, one best mastered away from an emergency situation. As volunteers, we can give them feedback about things they might not think about.
“Did they tell the person in the car that cutting equipment was suddenly going to appear next to their head? Did the casualty overhear them talking about other injured parties who might be friends or relatives?
“It is so incredibly loud during a vehicle extraction, it’s utterly terrifying if you’re the one in the car. Even when you’re pretending, it is reassuring when the firefighters speak kindly and let you know exactly what’s happening.”
As well as the Fire Service, the police, ambulance service, air ambulance and even search and rescue use volunteers from the Casualties Union, as does the RNLI, first aid trainers and even the Scouts and Girl Guides. Sarah, who volunteers several times a month in busy periods, says: “I was once rescued from a fire on a barge. We had to be screaming and shouting, trying to find our family. It really makes you realise how incredibly distressing it must be for everyone in a real-life scenario.”
And Sarah’s friends and family are now used to her unusual hobby. “Nobody bats an eyelid now when I say I broke my leg at the weekend,” she laughs. “It does raise eyebrows when I meet someone new though. But I’ve made some really amazing friends and I’m so glad that what I do for fun can actually help to save lives.”
Caroline Thomas, trustee of the Casualties Union, says: “Our volunteers do the most wonderful job in helping train rescue workers, and no doubt play a very important role in saving lives.” Kim West, Surrey Fire and Rescue Service Station Commander, says: “They enable greater realism and learning opportunities for staff.”
- Visit casualtiesunion.org.uk to find out more about becoming a volunteer