Emergency responders get crash course as ‘victims’ of simulated airport disaster give the performance of their lives
- Ellie Ruel
- Jul 27
- 6 min read
Scripted scenario of plane carrying 100 passengers crashing throws plenty of twists at rescuers
Jackie Jackson eagerly embraced the news that both of her hands and arms were about to be broken in a plane crash.
Dye simulating blood and putty simulating exposed bones were applied to her hands and forearms before she and 63 other volunteers were bused out to the tarmac at Juneau International Airport to play plane crash victims during an emergency rescue exercise Saturday.
They uttered agonized screams, wandered off irrationally and otherwise acted unpredictably (in ways their printed instructions told them to) as a couple dozen police, fire, airport, hospital and other officials tried to respond as they would in a real-life emergency.
“I wanted to get something exciting, and hopefully a good opportunity for the EMTs and other agencies to be able to work on me and learn a lot,” Jackson said while makeup was being applied to her about 90 minutes before the mid-morning “crash.”
The rescue officials acted out their own assigned roles, adding more chaos to an already volatile situation. Erratic moments such as firefighters passing out from heatstroke and offering conflicting patient counts played out according to a closely guarded script known to only three people.
One was Andres Delgado, the airport’s maintenance and operations superintendent, who wrote the scenario and then supervised the multiagency response. The airport conducts full-scale live training exercises every three years and “desktop” preparedness exercises annually.
Delgado said this year’s script included rescue situations local officials are likely to face, plus a series of planned mishaps and some unexpected incidents added while the exercise was in progress.
“Obviously we had a lot more ‘reds’ than I had promised,” he told rescue officials in a debriefing afterward, referring to seriously injured victims. “That’s because a lot of times it’s worse than you expect.”
The simulation was a hydraulic failure on a 737-800 jet carrying 100 people that kept the flaps from deploying, causing the plane to land hard, veer off the runway and catch fire as it broke apart. Numerous fatalities resulted — represented by inflatable dummies and plush toys in the fire area — while a short distance away the volunteers were strewn about on the pavement with various levels of injury ranging from minor to fatal.
Emergency officials weren’t told what the scenario was during a pre-exercise briefing, which focused instead on guidelines (i.e. “real-life emergency” as the code phrase if a response was needed to an actual local incident) and objectives.
“This is a drill of the system, not of your individual performance,” Sam Russell, assistant chief of administration for Capital City Fire/Rescue, told his responders. “So do the best you can do at the things you know how to do, but don't worry about how things turn out, OK?….We're going to get the fire put out, and we're going to move our victims as best we can, and we're going to do it without hurting anybody today — either us or the victims — and that's the goal.”
Some aspects of the simulation didn’t fully conform to a real emergency. The airport remained in operation — so floatplane and sightseeing helicopters were taking off and landing nearby throughout — whereas in a real disaster airspace would be shut down. Also, if there were dozens of severely injured people needing immediate care — well beyond the hospital’s capacity — other medical local providers as well as extensive airlifting to facilities outside Juneau would be involved.
The “victims” were also spared from having IVs injected, clothing cut off and some other actions typical of major injury incidents. But each received a sheet of paper detailing their vital signs, injuries and behaviors they were supposed to exhibit.
On the way to the crash site, the “victims” excitedly fixed their prosthetics and blood bags. A few did last-minute medical research to properly display their symptoms. One said she needed to figure out how to properly represent the respiratory rate listed, which was meant to mimic a traumatic brain injury.
Stebi Sanchez, who played a moderately injured but very disoriented victim, already had some experience with what symptoms to display.
“This is not my first rodeo doing an exercise like this, coming from the military, I have unfortunately seen things like this before,” Sanchez said. “With the understanding that this was a timing exercise, not a medical exercise, I think they did a really good job. We’re back here in an hour and a half.”
Sanchez was also happy with his acting skills, saying he had some of the paramedics convinced he was actually injured.
“I put in the effort and people noticed, so I was really happy about that,” he said.
The exercise, which began shortly before 10 a.m. with an emergency alert about an inbound jet in distress, was scheduled to last until about 1 p.m. But Delgado called an official “end of exercise” at 11:24 a.m. as the firefighting portion was less intense than scripted — one of several “audibles” that occurred — and all of the victims needing hospitalization were transported by that time.
All of the volunteers exhibited “Oscar-worthy performances,” as Delgado called it. Wails and fake screams of pain filled the tarmac as actors called out for family members or yelled that they “weren’t dead yet.”
Some of the simulated “victims” even created complex backstories to sell their plight. Leila Rocereta and her friend Kennedy Savage decided to adopt the aliases of Jessica Williams and Elizabeth Jackman, respectively. The two crafted an elaborate narrative of flying back from a bachelorette party, adding some soap-opera-esque dramatic flair.
“I was supposed to be getting married, but all my teeth fell out and I have a laceration on my face. And my wedding’s in two weeks, and I look like this. What am I supposed to do?” Rocereta explained. “The wedding’s got to be postponed, and I spent so much money, and we just found out I’m pregnant.”
Aylin Wolter, 15, played the part of a very hysterical crash victim. Wolter was screaming for the entire 90-minute exercise and went through one and a half bottles of water in the process to prevent herself from going hoarse.
“I’ve never been a part of something like this before, but I thought it was really interesting how it worked,” she said. “I really like acting.”
“The makeup is fantastic,” added Madison Gambala, who had been outfitted with prosthetic face burns and pretended to be unable to follow first responders’ instructions.
Other chaos was caused by some of the officials — although not necessarily while acting in official roles. One officer, for instance, climbed into a fire department SUV being used by Mark Fuette, a CCFR EMT, and drove off unnoticed until Fuette radioed Delgado seven minutes later.
“Apparently there was an intruder here who took off with my vehicle,” Fuette reported.
Delgado, well aware of the theft he’d scripted, paused a beat before replying.
“Roger. Did scene security handle the situation?” he asked.
“I have no idea,” Fuette responded.
Another pause.
“Roger. Do you have eyes on your vehicle?” Delgado asked.
“Yes, I can see it all the way across the tarmac by Echo One,” Fuette said, referring to a gate at the opposite end of the airfield.
Delgado kept Fuette waiting for another beat.
“Roger…we may want to get JPD on it,” Delgado said.
At that point a third voice cut in: “I’ve got an ambulance and a fire truck here, and we were able to stop him and I’ve got airport police on the way.”
“Excellent. Thank you,” Delgado said, wrapping up that particular “audible.”
Delgado, at the start of the exercise, said he was performing double duty as the airport superintendent in the response scenario as well as observing the performance of other officials. Others also were playing dual roles due to a key problem — an ongoing staffing shortage at agencies citywide — that was highlighted during the debriefing.
“We don’t have enough bodies, we don’t have enough resources, we don’t have enough trucks,” said Brandon Bagwell, CCFR’s aircraft rescue and firefighting chief. “And that is something that we need to have a long conversation about how we want to proceed in the future.”
• Contact Ellie Ruel at ellie.ruel@juneauindependent.com. Juneau Independent Editor Mark Sabbatini contributed to this story. He can be contacted at editor@juneauindependent.com or (907) 957-2306.
More photos from Saturday’s simulated plane crash
