Preparing For The Worst-Case Scenario

August 18, 2005

By BEN GARRETT
Independent Herald Editor

As Scott Countians settle into a new work week at their respective job sites, the sunny Monday morning seems like any other calm, mid-August morning.

Then, the call is issued to emergency workers from the county’s E-911 dispatch office in Huntsville: A plane has crashed-landed at the Scott County Airport, hitting two loaded transportation vans in the process.

A tragic scene awaits rescue workers at the end of the airport’s Number 2 runway: At least two people are dead. Several more are severely injured. A diesel fuel fire burns, complicating the accident scene.

Fortunately, there’s nothing about the accident scene that is real; the vehicles were rolled into place by airport staff and the Tennessee Emergency Management Association (TEMA); the “victims” are practical nursing students at the Tennessee Technology Center in Jacksboro.

Still, the exercise provides excellent training for the various emergency response agencies in Scott County, according to TEMA’s Carl McDonald.

“These exercises are strictly to test the readiness of the response people in Scott County,” McDonald said. He added that TEMA conducts several such exercises in East Tennessee each year, including a similar exercise in Morgan County last Saturday.

“Scott County hasn’t had very many full exercises and this exercise is full to a manner,” McDonald said.

He added that emergency response units are observed as they “work” the accident scene, and are then critiqued on their strengths and weaknesses.

The first to arrive on the scene after the call for help went out was Wade Smithers. Smithers, an employee at nearby ATS Maintenance, is a trained paramedic and volunteers as a first responder.

As the victims inside the plane and the vans cried for help, Smithers went for door to door, assessing the situation and trying to get inside. But the doors were locked. When the first unit from Scott County EMS arrived on the scene minutes later, Smithers informed them that the Scott County Rescue Squad would be needed to help extract the victims from the vehicle.

Within 10 minutes after the call for help went out, two units from Scott County EMS and EMS Director Jim Reed are on-scene and have begun to work on the patients. Two are dead, they report. Another has an open chest wound. Another has a wooden object impaled in her chest. A pregnant woman goes into labor. At least two will require transport to the University of Tennessee Medical Center by Lifestar.

While the injuries may be fake, the cries for help and the sight of the victims as they are removed from the vehicles by paramedics would look real enough to any passerby who happened by the scene.

The realistic aspect was added through some careful detail and planning, according to Cindi Stooksbury, an RN who is the instructor of practical nursing at TTC of Jacksboro.

“We spent about two hours on makeup this morning and also worked on it on Friday,” she said.

Minutes after EMS arrives on the scene, two units from the Mid-County Volunteer Fire Department arrive to extinguish a burning diesel fuel fire that was ignited when the plane “struck” a barrel of fuel.

“Ideally, we would have our own first responders team, but small airports don’t have their own teams, so we rely on other agencies around the county,” said Mike Douglas, manager of the Scott County Airport. He added that, in the event of an actual emergency, crews would be called upon to respond much the same as they did Monday morning.

McDonald said that the only difference between Monday’s exercise and an actual air crash would be that if a plane were to crash, the Transit Board would take control of the scene. The wounded would be treated and transported by emergency responders, he said, but the dead would be left exactly as they were until Transit Board officials arrived.

If the crash involved a military plane, he said, the military would take complete control of the accident scene, while local emergency workers’ responsibility would be to secure the area and wait for military personnel to arrive.

newsroom@ihoneida.com

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