Authorities conduct mock crash drill - complete with hitches

Tom Gardner

Thursday, May 27, 1999 | 9:21 a.m.

RENO, Nev. - The scanner sent out the alarm tones at 9:34 a.m.

Police, fire and medical units were ordered to a jetliner down with 130 people on board in Rancho San Rafael Park about 5 miles northwest of the Reno airport.

The next words were welcome: "This is a drill. This is only a drill."

But the agencies that turned out Wednesday found a grassy field filled with the injured. Bumps and bruises, burns, gashes and worse. Some had metal protruding from their wounds. Others didn't make it.

Along with the victims, the ground was littered with clothing and fake limbs. A mannequin was impaled on a sign. Half a mannequin lay below it.

"What we're doing here is trying to simulate as closely as possible the procedure for disaster," Reno Fire Marshal Larry Farr said.

The Federal Aviation Administration requires the exercise once every three years by airports it governs. FAA officials were at the park along with people from local, state and federal agencies. They will meet on Friday for an evaluation.

Just as in a real tragedy, each of the victims was evaluated by medical personnel who identified the severity of the injuries in a process known as triage.

Since the volunteers felt about as good as anybody could while lying hurt in a field in 80-degree temperatures, they wore tags that gave rescuers clues such as pulse, blood pressure and respiration for evaluation. Wailing was optional.

Those hints, and a brief interview if the person was conscious, produced a card around the victims' necks to showing their conditions.

If the bottom strip was green, the person was a "walking wounded."

Tearing off the green left a yellow strip for moderately injured. The next strip was red for the most seriously hurt. The final one was black.

The phalayx of paramedics who followed then knew the first people to send out in what's called the "golden hour."

"If we can get the most critical patients to the hospital within that golden hour, then we have the most success for trying to save lives," Reno Battalion Chief Rod Buchanan said.

One woman with a yellow stripe, her left arm badly burned, cried, "You're taking out the dead bodies and leaving me here."

A police officer quickly knelt beside her to comfort her until paramedics arrived.

At another point, a woman hopped over the yellow tape barrier, looking frantically for her "Uncle Bob."

The woman with the burned arm, Pat Rosaschi, said she knew exactly what was supposed to be wrong with her, as did all the other volunteers. But they were sworn to silence to help medics in judging the accuracy of their instant evaluations.

In addition to the real reporters covering the drill, there even were fake media giving airport and city spokesmen a hard time. More than up for that challenge was Chris Chrystal, a 12-year veteran of United Press International who now is with Nevada's Commission on Tourism.

"You'll have that answer for me in 10 minutes?" she said in the face of Reno spokesman Chris Good. "You told me you'd have that answer in 10 minutes 10 minutes ago!"

For some, like Farr, it was a grim reminder of Reno's worst crash, which occurred in 1985 when a charter flight went down just south of the airport, killing all but one of the 71 people on board.

"That was intense, high drama," Farr said. "This helps prepare you for that, although nothing can be like the real thing."

Since Thursday's victims were volunteers, the actual cost of the drill was minimal, according to Adam Mayberry, a spokesman for Reno-Tahoe International Airport.

"When you're dealing with a life-saving exercise, it's pretty hard to put a price tag on it," he said.