If for some reason they could not immediately find the raft, they might need to float on their backs for a while in the open sea. In the classroom, students learned tips they would later use in the swimming pool. Then she moved to the sea, telling students they could survive for weeks if they followed her instructions. In that situation, evacuees should never eat snow. “That is what will kill you,” she warned. If ditching in Alaska, they should immediately take shelter from the wind. If marooned in a jungle, the students learn, they should build a smoky fire - one that will allow emergency crews to find them. “What is hypothermia, Adam?” she asks one student. Occasionally, perhaps when she sees a student dozing, she employs the Socratic method. In the classroom - in this course she had 10 students - Adams quickly shuffles through slides that both prepare crew members and scare the bejesus out of them. As crew members, our job is to protect people.” “We do not want to sugarcoat it,” Adams said. On the morning before the group went to the Cal State Long Beach swimming pool, one flight attendant simply left the course. But her mission is to test their resolve, to see if she can push students over the edge. She knows that many of the situations for which she trains flight crews rarely happen. Pattie Adams, a slight, fit, 63-year-old former United and Pan Am flight attendant, runs the show here. “Throw him overboard,” came the replies, without delay. If someone died in the raft, what would they do? Then the instructor asked one last question. It was a mini Bible, roughly 2-by-1 inches, maybe 50 pages long. Then one participant - a pilot with a crewcut - discovered something tiny hidden in a plastic bag. They also discovered a hidden pouch that, if used correctly, would collect rainwater, safe for drinking. The students played with a Rube Goldberg-esque contraption that turns sea water into drinking water, provided evacuees were willing to pump - and pump and pump and pump - to make it work. The nighttime ones had three round nubs on the top of the package so evacuees could feel them in the dark. There were a bunch of flares, some meant for day and others night. “They taste like graham crackers,” the instructor said, cheerily. There was plenty of food, mainly in the form of flat, long, 1,000-calorie cookies. Inside, the trainees explored various pouches, tucked in the side of the raft. Hence, the giant raft, which on this warm, sunny afternoon floated in an outdoor swimming pool at Cal State Long Beach, about 30 feet from some puzzled college kids at water polo practice.
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