While the majority of Bowie Marketplace Mall remains vacant and awaiting redevelopment, at least one national organization has found a use for it.
The National Community Emergency Response Team Program shot scenes for a new training video inside the mall June 4.
‘‘When we were scouting locations I thought, ‘This is really great and really creepy,’” said Rachel Jacky, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s National CERT Director.
County CERT programs and fire departments have used the mall for training exercises in the past but this is the first film to be produced there, said Calvin Hawkins Jr., a Prince George’s County’s Office of Emergency Management spokesman.
‘‘[This building] is already set up in a disaster situation,” Hawkins said of the reason that agencies favor the site for training exercises. ‘‘It can be very overwhelming and frightening. This is an opportunity to build up [trainees’] confidence.”
Alan Creveling, Bowie’s emergency management resource coordinator, said the city has made an effort to support and supplement the county’s emergency management programs.
‘‘The mere fact they came out here to do their photo shoot shows that,” he said.
Additional scenes were shot Thursday and Friday at the Summerfield Housing complex in Landover.
The new video, to be released in the fall, will refine and update emergency response and life saving skills depicted in the training video currently in use, Hawkins said. The video currently in use was produced 10 years ago, Jacky said.
‘‘The purpose of the training video is for individuals taking CERT basic training to see a good example of how a team operates in a basic emergency,” Jacky said.
This film will feature techniques such as carrying injured victims from a site, how to properly search a building for victims, and assessing injuries. It also will be shown in community forums to promote the program.
In a small former office space in the rear of the mall, CERT volunteers donning official green vests repeated rolling and lifting victims doused in fake blood for the camera. The storyline of the film revolves around CERT members responding to a community center that has been damaged by high winds. Between takes, makeup artist Crystal Soveroski from Berwyn Heights dabbed more fake blood on victims who lay scattered on the floor.
‘‘I’ve played the victim several times and to help I always come back,” said Ervin Reid, a CERT volunteer from Washington, D.C.
For more information about Bowie’s CERT program, call Creveling at 301-809-3079.
E-mail Andrea Noble at anoble@gazette.net.
What is CERT?
The Community Emergency Response Team program teaches techniques such as:
How to use a fire extinguisher
How to shut off residential gas pipelines
How to respond to a medical disaster (i.e. pandemic flu outbreak)
How to properly lift and carry the injured
Source: Alan Creveling, Bowie’s Emergency Management Resource Coordinator
