By Rebecca Carr
Edmonds Beacon
EDMONDS, Wash. — Smoke billowed out of the broken-off 767 front end, as frightened screams and moans of pain filled the air, and sirens wailed in the distance.
Dozens of dazed, bleeding passengers lurched and stumbled out of the downed aircraft while the body of a less fortunate victim draped lifelessly out a window.
Within moments, several firefighters and paramedics were on scene, quickly evaluating injuries and setting up a triage area a safe distance from the disaster, amid swirling wind gusts and pouring rain.
Other emergency personnel were busily notifying area hospitals and arranging for transport of the injured victims.
Fortunately for all involved, this was just a drill. Fortunately for all who live in the area, Paine Field conducts these Mass Casualty Incident drills every three years, per an FAA requirement.
More than a dozen area police and fire departments participated in the training exercise, including Mukilteo and Edmonds fire personnel.
“It’s a great opportunity to work with people in our neighboring departments and get to know each other,” said Paine Field Safety Officer and Fire Chief Jeff Bohnet.
“The last thing you want at an emergency scene like this is working with people you don’t know.”
In this year’s incident, a plane “ran off the runway,” crashing into a hilly area accessed by a narrow road and partially surrounded by woods.
More than 70 “passengers” were onboard, the largest scale training exercise that Paine Field has conducted to date.
Some victims were thrown from the plane and landed in a swamp near the wreckage site, necessitating a water rescue.
“We chose the area intentionally,” said drill coordinator and Paine Field firefighter Tony Mace. “It was the same area used for our tabletop exercise we had last fall.
“It has been widely recognized as one of the most challenging areas for an aircraft to crash in our jurisdiction.”
“Geography is one of our biggest challenges,” said Capt. Mike Zimmerman of Paine Field Fire. “Swamps, woods, we have to be able to respond no matter where an incident happens.”
This year’s drill was deemed a success, both logistically and educationally, according to Mace.
“At the same time, both with the drill and real life, communications was the biggest need for improvement,” Mace said. “Anytime you get that many agencies together who are used to operating on different frequencies, it is going to present a challenge, and this drill was no different.”
Evaluators quickly assessed the frantic, bleeding victims, assigning tags as to the severity of their injuries.
Those with relatively minor injuries - including broken bones - were assigned green tags and quickly loaded onto buses to make way to treat the more seriously wounded.
Yellow tag victims had multiple and/or compound fractures, severe lacerations and other injuries deemed serious but not immediately life threatening.
Red tags signified life-threatening injuries requiring immediate care. In an actual emergency, rescue personnel would likely respond in helicopters to take them to area hospitals as far as way as Port Angeles and Tacoma.
“Local hospitals are quickly overwhelmed by so many victims arriving at once,” Zimmerman said.
This year, the only “black tag” was DOA; medics successfully rescued all of the other passengers.
Also in an actual emergency, area hospitals, overwhelmed by the influx of injured patients, would be calling in all off-duty doctors, technicians and nurses.
Meanwhile, the Technical Rescue Response Team from South Snohomish County, comprised of agencies including Fire District 1, Lynnwood and Edmonds fire departments, conducted a water rescue a few hundred yards away, where some victims were ejected from the plane into a swamp.
Those taking part in the drill included firefighters and medics from Boeing, Everett, Fire District 1, Lynnwood, Edmonds, Mukilteo, Fire District #22, North County Fire and EMS, law enforcement from the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office and the city of Everett, and ambulance services from Rural Metro and AMR.
Community Transit provided buses for transporting victims to local area hospitals.
“CT is part of our response system,” Zimmerman said. “They’ll pull a bus or a couple of buses right out of service in the event of an emergency of this scale.”
Bohnet emphasized that all rescue personnel participating were working overtime, and that no jurisdiction was left unmanned or undermanned during the exercise.