Albany, Dougherty County first responders hone skills with mock airplane disaster drill

ALBANY – It’s easy being green, at least when it comes to medical triage. They are the walking wounded who can take themselves out of harm’s way and to an ambulance.

During a Wednesday disaster exercise at Albany’s airport, it was those with yellow and red color codes who had a tougher time, slathered in makeup simulating injuries and pleading for help.

And for those tagged black, it meant being pronounced as dead by Dougherty County Coroner Michael Fowler and then encased in body bags up to the neck before funeral home personnel wheeled them to a waiting fleet of hearses.

That was part of the scene that unfolded at the Southwest Georgia Regional Airport Wednesday, where volunteers played the roles of victims, and first responders acted out their roles of dousing the flames and then caring for the injured.

The Federal Aviation Administration requires that airports hold the drills at regular intervals, so Wednesday morning’s edition was the first airplane scenario undertaken locally in three years.

The goal, with the makeup and moaning and lying around in the grass, for almost an hour for some, as Dougherty County Emergency Medical Services professionals evaluated and triaged patients, was to make it as real as possible.

“In order to actually be prepared for these types of situations, you can’t just talk about it,” Dougherty County interim EMS Director James Gibney said. “It takes actually getting out there and doing this to identify all the injuries.”

During the triage period, EMS personnel evaluate each patient’s condition by using the color-coded tags that give a description of the injuries.

Those with the yellow tag, which represents non-critical injuries, are the first to be moved to waiting ambulances, while those with red tags — the critical patients — are the last to be treated. That may sound counterintuitive, but it has a purpose.

“Triage is a bad situation, and you are trying to make the best you can out of it,” Gibney said. “It doesn’t mean you’re not taking care of everybody; you just have to choose who comes first.”

The reasoning is to save the maximum number of patients at a hectic scene.

“You’re trying to save the most lives,” Mike Pinson, an EMS shift supervisor and the agency’s disaster preparedness coordinator, said. “It’s (choosing between) somebody that’s deteriorating fast where you can save three or four others instead.”

Wednesday’s drill also gave first responders the chance to work together as a team in an enactment, officials said.

In a few days the agencies will gather for a “hot wash,” during which they will evaluate their performances and discuss how they can make improvements, Airport Safety Chief Gary Ethridge said.

Communication is always a concern at a chaotic disaster scene with multiple agencies, and it is no different during a drill, he said. That is the main area he identified as needing improvement. In the event of an actual crash, local first responders would call in units from area agencies with which they have mutual aid agreements, adding to the difficulty.

“One of the main things in any emergency situation is always communication,” Ethridge said. “One of the things we’re going to discuss is the communication between the mutual aid (agencies).”

This year a couple of new twists were added: a volunteer who speaks no English and an unaccompanied minor represented by a lifelike doll. A disaster simulator aircraft also was brought in for the exercise.

Ethridge began brainstorming for the drill in August 2024 and came up with the scenario of a plane with faulty landing gear rolling over upon landing. Two months later that scenario unfolded in real life in Canada.

As was the case with Gibney and Pinson, Ethridge judged the drill a success.

“Ninety-nine point nine percent of everything went really well,” he said. “I’m happy for the way things went today.

“Every three years, the FFA requires us to do a full-scale disaster drill. It prepares my guys for their jobs, and it gives us the chance to work with other agencies and see where our deficiencies are.”