Every 15 minutes

For two days our staff and students participated in program called "Every 15 minutes". On the average every fifteen minutes a teenager dies in a traffic accident. I think that that is the statistic. The idea is to bring teens away from making reckless choices about drinking and driving, even deciding to ride with a drunk.

An announcement comes over the loudspeaker. It is the recreation of a 911 call. Something like, "Oh, my God, there's been an accident over on Franklin Road." "Is anybody hurt?" "I don't know." "Stay there I'm sending a police and ambulance over as quickly as possible."

That message is our cue to send the teachers down to a place below school where two cars have apparently collided. A girl, bloodied is hanging out of a broken window. As all 1300 students watch, first a police car arrives, followed by several more, a first responder rescue squad, a fire truck and an ambulance. The first responders ascertain the situation. The big equipment comes out to cut open the car and rescue the injured in the back seat. The girl who went through the window is put in a body bag and taken by the coroner. One of girls in back seat is brought to a waiting helicopter and flown to a trauma center. Another of the injured is placed in an ambulance to be taken to the local hospital. A policeman subjects the driver of one vehicle to a sobriety test. Then the cop places him in handcuffs and excourts him to the back seat of the waiting police vehicle. A dozen students and one teachers along with the grim reaper stand by. On the previous day, every 15 minutes one person was removed from the student body, symbolizing the death of a student in a traffic accident every 15 minutes in the United States.

The next day the entire school assembles in the gym. We get the back-story there. A fifteen minute film is assembled reviewing the events of the previous day, but adding the visit to the hospital, the communications with parents and the booking of the drunk driver. Many of the support staff have take the victims and their families though a simulated accident scenerio during those two days. The parents of the "deceased" have written a letter to their "dead" child. Their children have written back from the grave and both read their stories to the assembled 1200 students and support staff. Then an undertaker described in detail how he gives dead people their last bath. Sometimes he can clean them up so the family can say their last goodbyes face to face and sometimes that isn't possible. He discribed how a family had to feel a loved one through the body bad. A twenty six year old woman spoke about driving with a friend from Oakland to Sebastopol. Her friend, Alex, did sound for the band that night and stayed sober. Driving at the intersection of Stoney Point and Route 116 a car driven by a drunk Sonoma State student hit them so hard that their car with them in it ended up in a field and her friend, Alex died and cushoned the fall for her.

Then our principal, Chris Heller got up. "I would like everyone to know that I am six feet six and I am a man's man and it's OK to cry." And so as he read an emotional statement about how he cannot imagine a day without his two daughters, and choked over those words.

It is hard to know if this three day presentation will have a real impact, but it emotially touched many at the moment.