AUGUSTA, Ga. (WJBF) – Doctors Hospital and Fort Gordon teamed up on Wednesday to do some mass casualty training for a tornado disaster scenario.

In preparation for possible future disasters, the hospital brought in service members and students at Augusta Christian Schools for the yearly training.

The tornado in the scenario started in Harlem, went through Fort Gordon and ended at Jimmie Dyess Parkway.

Each participant was given a tag that had specific ailments listed on it, and they were categorized into groups.

“It’s never a good day when you have to do this kind of stuff for real, for obvious reasons, but I think if we ever have to it’ll be a good thing that we have done this before,” said Nicolas Reed-Bermudez, a participant from Fort Gordon.

The green group was for minor injuries, the yellow group was for injuries that could progressively get worse and the red group was for those who needed immediate help. 

And there was some special effects makeup to make it even more real. 

“Exposure to the events, exposure to the mentality of what you’re gonna see, what you’re gonna hear,” Reed-Bermudez said.

Although the simulation is helpful, leaders at the hospital want to remind everyone that it’ll be different in real life.

“We’d be triaging people right there in the cars,” said Acy Miller, the emergency manager and safety officer at Doctors Hospital. “Having gurneys, wheelchairs and beds available and ready to take them into the ER and stage them where we need to in the hospital.”

Different emergency response agencies in the area would also be involved.

“We work great with EMA, we had our EMA director for Richmond County out here today doing evaluations, seeing how we did,” Miller said. “So, we work real closely with our entities outside, Columbia County and Richmond County.”

Overall, Miller was happy with how the drill went.

“I think it went very well,” he said. “We don’t expect every drill to pass, we don’t want every drill to pass. You want the drills to have errors and flaws so we can actually work on that and make it even better for the next time.”

After every patient was assessed, all staff and participants had a debriefing about what went well, and what they need to work on for next time.