Texas A&M students confront simulated disasters at nation’s largest emergency response exercise

When a simulated explosion rocked a mock country music concert, students didn’t hesitate. Already triaging both human and animal victims of a bioterrorism attack involving fair food laced with botulism neurotoxin, simulation participants pivoted to receive waves of victims exhibiting explosion-related injuries as part of the 18th annual Disaster Day.

Conducted by the Texas A&M University Health Science Center (Texas A&M Health), Disaster Day is the nation’s largest student-led, interprofessional emergency response simulation. The exercise engages students from across Texas A&M Health, challenging participants to respond to large-scale emergencies. Each simulation features a unique scenario, developed over months of preparation. And the event involves multi-tiered partnerships with colleges across Texas A&M University, state entities, industry partners and community groups.

Friday’s exercise assembled more than 600 Texas A&M University students — in addition to faculty, staff and community partners from across the state — at Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service‘s (TEEX) Disaster City, a 52-acre mock city that simulates real disasters and serves as a training facility for emergency responders. Event participants engaged in triage at the disaster site, patient care at mock field hospitals, mental health care and needs assessment at an evacuation shelter, and disaster management and simulation oversight.

A new day, a new disaster

This year’s simulation demanded maximum composure and mental agility, as medical-professionals-in-training triaged symptoms ranging from gastrointestinal distress to mangled limbs. Event architects utilized Disaster City’s state-of-the-art facilities alongside professional and student makeup artists to generate an experience that would feel as realistic as possible for participants. This realism serves as a critical training element for students, said Christine Kaunas, assistant vice president for Interprofessional Practice, Education and Research, the Texas A&M Health office that oversees the coordination of the event in concert with a student planning committee.

“Disasters don’t discriminate,” Kaunas said. “From weather-related emergencies to man-made tragedies, disasters have the potential to reach every corner of our communities. As Texas A&M Health trains our state’s next generation of medical professionals, we know our students will take their life-saving skills and knowledge around the world. Whether they’re serving rural communities or providing care in urban environments, we want them as prepared as possible to render aid whenever and wherever disaster strikes.”

Evolving emergency frontiers

The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction notes “7,348 major recorded disaster events claiming 1.23 million lives, affecting 4.2 billion people (many on more than one occasion) resulting in approximately $2.97 trillion in global economic losses” from 2000-2019. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) lists global estimates at 400 natural disasters per year, along with 30 to 40 armed conflicts in its online Field Epidemiology Manual.

Severe weather accounted for a record $21 billion disasters in 2025, according to Climate Central, ranking as the “third-highest year (after 2023 and 2024) for billion-dollar weather and climate disasters — with 23 such events costing a total of $115 billion in damages.”

And a substantial portion of those disasters strike close to home, Kaunas said, with Texas seeing more disasters than any other state, year after year.

Taking a team approach

The event has long brought together partners from across the university, including the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, along with graduate athletic training students in the The Department of Kinesiology and Sport Management and The Department of Educational Psychology in the College of Education and Human Development. This year, graduate students from The Bush School of Government and Public Service also joined the simulation.

Valen Cepak ‘26 joined the exercise as a public information officer. Cepak is a second year Master of Public Service graduate student at the Bush School. As the event drew nearer, Cepak said he looked forward Texas A&M’s diverse range of disciplines coming together to learn from each other.

“I’m just excited to work with people and show them, this is how you talk in a major situation and — going forward — this is what it can look like to be calm, collected and cool, and talking about things that are ultimately just really hard to talk about,” he said.

As a student-led event, students learning from students represents a major Disaster Day goal, Kaunas said. She emphasized that having students, faculty, staff and community partners from such a diverse spectrum of fields working together transforms the typical learning environment from a more vertical, top-down format into a transformational experience that allows learning to flow in all directions.

Being the boots on the ground

Stephany Pinales ‘27, a fourth year doctoral candidate in the The Department of Educational Psychology, has served as this year’s assistant director of simulation participant engagement. This marks her fourth year participating in the simulation, as she previously served as a student provider and a member of the Student Planning Committee.

For Pinales, practicing classroom skills in a real-world environment feels like a concrete step toward utilizing her education to fulfill the Aggie calling toward selfless service.

“It’s a very unique opportunity to do boots on the ground kind of work,” she said “We get awesome training in the classrooms and labs, but this exercise allows us to apply everything we’ve learned, to collaborate, to use our experiences, learn from each other, debrief, and then come back and do it again. And then one day, we’ll be able to do it out in the field, using the things we’ve already learned through simulations to serve others.”

This student experience and passion is exactly what inspires Disaster Day 2026 Student Planning Director Madeleine Bradford. A third-year pharmacy student at the Texas A&M Irma Lerma Rangel College of Pharmacy, Bradford started her Disaster Day journey three years ago as a member of the Student Planning Committee and as a deputy incident commander, moving into the role of incident commander the following year.

“What brings me back to Disaster Day, year after year, is the feeling that I get when I leave Disaster Day,” she said. “It’s a long day. Student leadership is on site before the sun rises until almost after sunset. But every day, every disaster, every time I leave, I feel the biggest sense of accomplishment and passion for my future career and for what we do—not only with Disaster Day on the simulation side of things, but also for emergency response in general. And that feeling propels me every year into volunteering to do it all over again.”