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MANG and the Airport Conduct Emergency Exercise

By KFBB News Team

Story Created: Sep 1, 2010 at 5:13 PM MST

Story Updated: Sep 1, 2010 at 5:13 PM MST

Travelers at the Great Falls Airport may have thought their flights would be delayed after seeing emergency vehicles on the runway. But today’s mayhem was actually part of a full scale emergency exercise the airport and MANG conducted. The airport is required to conduct a live action exercise like this every three years by the FAA.

Today they simulated a mid-air collision between an F-15 from MANG and an incoming passenger plane crashing them both. More than 20 agencies from the region responded to the scene.

Fear, panic, confusion, today's readiness exercise had all the same emotions as the real thing. “Overall, I would think this is a pretty close realization,” volunteer victim, John Oldham says. Oldham's job was to act like he was on the plane when it crashed. “I was a victim as a result of a flash burn who was ejected from the aircraft. And hit my head,” he describes.

The exercise was as real as possible. Great Falls Fire Department and other agencies were not sitting ready and waiting. “We had them respond from downtown, so we got a little more realistic time crunch and time line on that,” Assistant Chief for MANG Fire Department, Darnell Stucker says.

Stucker says doing this helps all the agencies prepare for a real disaster. “If this were a real world incident, they’d know what their roles would be,” he says. As with any disaster, today's top priority was the well being of the victims. “We have to set up command and control. We have to look at the priority of whether or not we have a life safety issue. We have to look at how we’re going to stabilize the incident,” Stucker says.

Since Oldham played dead, he was able to watch a lot of the exercise and thinks it went well. Saying, “It was cold, obviously, but it was an efficient exercise, the people involved learned a lot.”

MANG Fire says this gives them an opportunity to improve their skills. Officials say communication between the different agencies was an issue and that's exactly why they do these simulations. “The only way we’re going to get better is by exercising,” Stucker says.

Of the 48 victims, two were air lifted to Benefis, four died and forty were bused to Benefis for treatment. One of the passengers in MANG’s F-15 is missing in action.

The airport still conducted business during the exercise and only shut down the runway for about 20 minutes.

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