Emergency Drill Held at Sheridan County Airport

June 8, 2025

News – Sheridan Media

What if a commercial plane were to crash when approaching to land at Sheridan County Airport? What emergency services would be available to help the victims of such a crash? That was the scenario at the emergency drill held on Saturday, June 7 at the Airport.

Airport manager Robert Gill explained the reason for the drill.

He said that there were 34 ‘victims’ of today’s crash. The SkyWest planes have a capacity of up to 50 passengers and three crew members. He said with regulations they have to have at least 20 people acting as victims for the drill.

Gill talked about the services that were a part of the drill, including airport fire, city fire, Sheridan County Sheriff’s Office, Sheridan Police Department, TSA and the airlines, search and rescue, Life Flights and many others.

He said that the FAA requires them to have the full-scale drills every three years, with table-top drills every year.

Representative Laurie Bratten attended the event, and added,

Before the exercise started, there was a talk to the volunteers, giving them an overview of the exercise, and that safety overrides everything else for those helping with the drill.

One of the volunteers, Karen Carvalho, whose husband, Chad, is a pilot for SkyWest Airlines, said she has been involved in these types of scenarios before,

She said that her two sons are in the civil air patrol, and they wanted some help applying the Moulage, which is the art of creating the mock injuries on the volunteers. Public health also helped with the realistic looking makeup.

The ‘plane’ was a VA bus, and there were passenger and crew still inside the ‘plane’ as well as scattered about on the grass. As well as the other injuries, the scenario included hazardous materials, adding another layer for the emergency responders to deal with.

Many times, after a plane crash, there is a fire. The first vehicle on the scene was the airport fire truck, carrying 1500 gallons of water to drench the fire.

There were fire trucks and ambulances as two ‘victims’ were transported to the hospital; two life-flight helicopters crews that picked up dummies who stood in for real volunteers; airport emergency workers; EMS personnel who accessed the ‘injuries’ of the victims; and the coroner who declared seven people out of the 34 on the plane ‘deceased,’ including a small child.

Possibly there would have been more people dead had not all the EMS crews acted promptly and worked together well in response to the accident.

After the exercise, the volunteers were invited to enjoy drinks and a lunch, and there would be discussion on what went well, and what could have been done better. The responders were evaluated as well on how well they handled the emergency.