Multiple agencies came together Tuesday afternoon at the Owensboro-Daviess County Regional Airport for a full-scale emergency exercise designed to test the airport’s crisis response plan.
The event, sponsored by the airport and Daviess County Emergency Management, featured live demonstrations and interactive scenarios meant to evaluate how first responders handle a large-scale incident.
Sheriff Brad Youngman said the training was essential for preparing for worst-case scenarios.
“When you talk about a situation of this magnitude, it’s all hands on deck. Everybody in an emergency capacity will be responding with trying to save lives,” Youngman said. “As far as law enforcement goes, it could easily be a crime scene if it were an act of terror or some sort of sabotage. Even if it were just a terrible accident, we would have traffic control, access control, and different things like that to respond to.”
He noted that while Daviess County has seen smaller airport alerts and crashes in the past, nothing had approached the scale of the scenario tested Tuesday.
“It’s always good for us to be able to stop what we’re doing and get all of the heads of our departments together,” Youngman said. “Whether it’s an airport disaster, a large-scale disaster at one of our factories, or even an active shooter, we all know each other, we all work well together, and we know what resources each of us brings to the table.”
Public Safety Director Jeremy Smith said the drill focused on the so-called “golden hour” — the first 60 minutes after an incident, which is often critical for saving lives.
“We’re trying to get all these patients to the hospital to give them the best chance of survival,” Smith said. “We had firefighters, EMS, volunteers, and emergency management directors from several communities here. Evaluators looked at how we responded in the field, how EMS performed, and how quickly we could establish an Emergency Operations Center.”
Representatives from Owensboro Health were also on-site for the exercise.
Smith added that while officials expected to find gaps, the goal was to learn from them.
“We knew going in that we were going to fail on some of these aspects, but we wanted to be sure we didn’t fail on those critical pieces,” he said. “Every emergency is unique, but this helps us be ready for whatever comes.”
The exercise is required every three years under Federal Aviation Administration regulations, though Youngman said local agencies used the opportunity to build broader collaboration and ensure they don’t become complacent.
“The goal is always going to be to save lives,” he said.
