The mock airplane crash site looked eerily real with a fire and paramedics tending to victims scattered across the field near the wreckage.

It is a drill the Hattiesburg-Laurel Regional Airport conducts once every three years to test the airport’s and local emergency agencies’ effectiveness to respond to an airplane crash, according to the airport’s Executive Director Tom Heanue.

The Federal Aviation Administration requires the airport to conduct an emergency response exercise once a year, but it has the full-scale exercise like this one only once every three years.

“To make it realistic we get a big fire going. We get role players from Jones Junior College, and they’re going to be the bodies,” Heanue said. “They’ll be laid out with a variety of injuries. They’ve got little tags on them, so when the first responders come up to them they’ll know what injury they have.”

The exercise began with a pilot radioing in his aircraft, a CRJ900 which was carrying around 50 passengers, was going down. Various paramedics, volunteer firefighters, airport staff, Jones County Emergency Management Agency officials and other officials from Forrest and Jones counties soon responded the site.

“The exercise not only tests the airport response but also the local responders in the area. That includes the fire departments, ambulances, law enforcement and the hospital system,” Heanue said.

Firefighters worked to extinguish the grass fire started by the crash while first responders and paramedics tended to the crash victims who let loose their acting talents by pretending to be panicked and injured.

Heanue said Petal High School students went to Forrest General Hospital in Hattiesburg to simulate crash victims arriving.