Emergency mock mass-casualty training exercises put Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson personnel to the test Thursday.
With past dangerous situations happening on base, it's real-life training that officials were eager to take on.
Everyone responded to a mock simulation crash of a C-130 airplane that included fire, smoke, mass casualties and injured bodies, part of an emergency management exercise that involved the entire base.
JBER crews knew there would be an exercise, but they did not know what kind it would be.
"We saw the smoke, we saw the facility was burning," said MSgt. Joshua Wilson, a firefighter on JBER.
As part of the drill, the focus was life safety and preserving property.
"We show up on scene and the aircraft was our priority, so our aircraft crews responded over there and got that fire out pretty quickly and then we worry about the victims," said Wilson.
With exercise evaluation team members looking on and offering advice, military personnel had to prioritize who needed help first.
Keith Pellerin has seen scenarios like this before from the AWAC crash in 1995 and the C-17 crash 2010. The mock crash exercise was only a quarter-mile away from those two deadly crashes that took 28 lives, Pellerin added.
As a firefighter on base for more than 20 years, Pellerin said this training is as close as it gets to the real deal.
"Part of the experience helps you kind of stay calm, which if you stay calm, everybody else will be calm as well on the scene," Pellerin said. "We just take every incident as what we have been trained to do and with the added experience, it helps us kind of use our mind as a rolodex to revert back to what we've done, what are some of the loopholes, what we can do better."
It's lifelike training that is bringing the installation together.
"At a moment's notice this could happen and interaction with other agencies we don't do on a regular basis, so this is definitely key," said MSgt. Glenn Santos, a JBER firefighter who was part of the exercise evaluation team.
It's a key to protecting the base and everyone that's on it.
Throughout the year, JBER also conducts other emergency exercises for situations like deploying, natural disasters, and active shooters.
Officials say it's all in preparation for the 2014 operational readiness inspection to test JBER's capabilities to fight in the real world.
Contact Corey Allen-Young