By Shannon Lukens. (Mock disaster victim photos are courtesy Amanda Shepherd with Routt County.)
(These are volunteers and they do not have real injuries.)
An emergency disaster drill was held at Yampa Valley Regional Airport Wednesday. The Routt County Office of Emergency Management organized a mock plane crash disaster at the airport, complete with volunteer victims and all local law enforcement and first responders from Northwest Colorado.
Airport Manager Kevin Booth said they all worked together during the drill.
“This is a chance for us to exercise the way we think we will in a very challenging mishap and work with the people that we know we’re going to work with during the real thing. It’s stressful. And it’s good to put the team under stress and see how we react, or learn what really works well and make sure we keep doing it that way.”
The scenario was that a commercial flight on “Exercise Airlines” was flying from Denver into Hayden when there was an emergency on the plane, right before landing. The plane went off the runway and there was a fire.
Travis Wilkinson was the Incident Commander. He said there were 120 people on board the pretend flight. Five were crew members. After the incident, 52 were injured and 59 died.
A C130 flight flew in from Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado Springs to participate in the exercise. They had six crew and seven medical personnel who helped with the drill all day.
A mock press conference happened later in the afternoon where officials were introduced by Routt County Commissioner Sonja Macys. Local media was asked to participate. Media on hand (Steamboat Radio News and The Yampa Valley Bugle) asked mock questions of the officials.
Airport Manager Kevin Booth says airport staff does one major accident exercise like this every year. This is his 9th year doing it. They had 36 volunteers and local law enforcement from throughout the region participating.