By Brenda Erdahl
Maple Lake High School students learned a valuable lesson Wednesday, May 8 that organizers hope they won’t soon forget – it was the day of the mock crash.
Students took their seats on bleachers in the north school parking lot where they were given a brief synopsis of the situation before tarps were removed from the staged scene. Before them two vehicles lay twisted and broken and in the debris two student-actors lay still. One had been thrown from the vehicle and the other was draped lifelessly across the hood of the car.
According to the story the students were told, a group of their classmates had been celebrating the near completion of another long school year. Drinking, driving, texting and snap chatting, the driver had blown through the stoplights at the County Road 37 and Highway 25 intersection, broadsiding a family going home from a movie in Monticello.
The audience was quiet as the emergency vehicles appeared on scene, sirens blaring. Maple Lake Schools had partnered with numerous local agencies to make the mock crash as real and impactful as possible.
Numerous Wright County agencies were involved in the mock crash at the high school last week including the Maple Lake Fire Department who used the opportunity as training.