Hundreds of Orcutt Academy High School students on Thursday watched as emergency crews swarmed two wrecked cars on the school’s blacktop during the first day of the school’s Every 15 Minutes program.

Though the crash was staged, it featured realistic injuries and a full simulated emergency response meant to confront students with the consequences of impaired driving.

Coordinated locally by the California Highway Patrol and Fighting Back Santa Maria Valley, the two-day program includes students and parents who take on roles tied to a fatal driving-under-the-influence crash scenario.

Organizers said the goal is to show the ripple effects that impaired driving can have on a community, family and friends. Orcutt Academy High School students from all grade levels participated, and the program will conclude Friday with a schoolwide mock funeral and memorial assembly.

The demonstration began with a simulated 911 call over the school’s PA system as students filed out toward a caution-taped crash scene built around two sedans that appeared to have collided head-on. Student actors inside the vehicles wore special-effects makeup showing bruises, broken bones and other traumatic injuries as law enforcement, firefighters and paramedics carried out a full mock emergency response.

“Everybody comes in and does exactly what they would do in a real-life scenario so that the kids see exactly what happened step by step in an accident like this,” said CHP Officer Maria Barriga, who helped coordinate logistics for the event.

Nearby, students with skeleton face paint stood silent and expressionless near the wreckage while an actor portraying the Grim Reaper moved through the scene. Barriga said those students, referred to as the “Walking Dead,” were pulled from class at 15-minute intervals throughout the morning and had their cellphones taken as part of the simulation.

“They have no contact with the outside world,” she said. “They are dead to everybody.”

As the scene unfolded, one student with “visible injuries” was loaded onto a stretcher and placed in an ambulance, while another “critically injured” student was loaded into a helicopter that landed on the nearby lawn as part of the emergency response.

Senior Hayden Welsh said the realism of the event hit close to home for him.

“Honestly, it felt like a reliving of a few past events in my life,” Welsh said. “I’ve been in a car crash myself, and I’ve had family members who have passed from car crashes as well.”

He added that he also had witnessed his father being wheeled on a stretcher after an accident caused by a drunken driver.

After the injured students were evacuated, law enforcement officers put the student portraying the impaired driver through a field sobriety test before handcuffing him and placing him in the back of a patrol vehicle as classmates looked on.

“Seeing all of this together, it really reminds me of the raw reality of how terrible drunk driving can be,” Welsh said.

Barriga said the simulation goes beyond the blacktop, with the student portraying the impaired driver actually going to the Santa Maria Police Department.

“They’ll do like a mock booking. They’ll fingerprint them, let them do their phone call to their parents to tell them what happened,” she said. “They’ll put them in a jail cell, take a booking photo.”

Barriga said the student who was airlifted would be received by emergency medical staff at Marian Regional Medical Center and that the funeral home would hold a viewing for the parents.

Those scenes, along with footage of the students’ mock house party, the crash and the booking process, will be incorporated into a video to be shown during Friday’s mock memorial assembly.

Barriga said the added realism is meant to help students understand the full chain of consequences that can follow a crash caused by impaired driving, while also prompting conversations between parents and their children.

A mother herself, Barriga said parents can set clear and firm expectations while still remaining understanding when their children make poor decisions.

“I would rather be pissed off at my kid because they did something stupid than have to bury them,” she said.

Barriga said she strongly encourages teenagers to have these “real conversations” with their parents, even if awkward or uncomfortable.

For Welsh, the demonstration reinforced a message he said students need to take seriously, particularly because he knows classmates who have struggled with drinking.

“I think it’s very important for people to see this because it’s the truth,” Welsh said. “It’s a raw reality that happens in this world, and it’s easily preventable if we just didn’t drink while driving. It’s a very simple solution to a very terrible problem.”