LASELL ISLAND — Late in the afternoon Friday, Oct. 12, emergency dispatchers in Knox and Waldo counties received hypothetical word of a 16-seat passenger plane going down in Penobscot Bay, south of Belfast and north of Rockland, possibly off of Camden. That call set off a series of hypothetical actions, including launching U.S. Coast Guard vessels out of Station Rockland to search the waters for signs of the accident, and more importantly, signs of life. Finding nothing, the search was "called off" that night.

Overnight, there was a report of smoke on Lasell Island, which sits between Islesboro to the north and Vinalhaven to the south. A privately owned island with two residences, but nobody there this time of year, emergency responders wondered if someone had survived the crash the evening before and swam to shore, building a small fire to keep warm overnight. A search and rescue team would be assembled in the morning and head to the island soon after debris from a plane crash and the bodies of five victims would be reportedly recovered from the water.

The discovery of crash debris and bodies would not be any truer than the plane crash itself, but the launch of a SAR team would be real.

When she saw the group arrive, a fresh dose of fake blood was poured on her head and face to simulate a head wound.

The scenario awaiting a local SAR group that had volunteered to search Lasell Island for survivors of a plane crash was all for training. Last weekend's plane crash exercise was the culmination of a handful of previous exercises honing skills in communication, accountability, planning and leadership.

The exercise was a joint production of the Knox and Waldo County Emergency Management agencies, headed by Ray Sisk in Knox County (Rockland) and Dale Rowley in Waldo County (Belfast.) It would ultimately involve approximately 100 individuals in various locations, the most visible to the public atop Mt. Battie, where a radio communications hub was set up, and in Rockland Harbor Park, which served as temporary home for Unified Command. For Saturday's exercise, Unified Command was "command central," where all communications were monitored and coordinated, and where everyone participating would ultimately end up for a debriefing of the day's events — start to finish.

At 7 a.m., Saturday, Oct. 13, a group of 10 volunteers gathered inside Camden First Aid Association's large classroom, which was abuzz with chatter and nervous laughter. By 7:30 a.m., more than half of the group had blue lips and some sported nasty-looking flesh wounds. One volunteer victim had a compound fracture in the form of a bloody, bone-protruding plastic patch with straps to affix it in place around the shin.

Of course the blue lips were created with makeup, as was the eye shiner and the fat lip surrounded by red lacerations and irritated-looking skin.

Kyle Santheson, Waldoboro's EMA director, was in charge of the victims group, which included SAR evaluator Aliesha Black and EMS evaluator Kerry Pomeleau. CFAA Quarter Master Ellie Adams was the "victim wrangler," applying injury moulage and makeup before the drill and assisting Pomeleau and Black with telling the SAR volunteers just how for they needed to go in performing various medical procedures on the victims.

Saturday's drill, after all, was to be as real as it could be without anyone actually suffering so much as a sore muscle or cold derriere from sitting on the ground too long while awaiting "rescue."

Black said the rescuers were to be evaluated on a set of criteria that included how organized they were, of they accounted for everyone at all times, if they effectively used communication, if they came prepared with the proper equipment and whether they found everyone and safely transported them off the island. Individuals from the Midcoast and Waldo County Search and Rescue teams volunteered for the training, and they arrived on the island about an hour after the victims.

When the victims arrived, the first was left between two barns not far from the resident's boat dock on the southwest side of the island. Told to stay out of site and lay on the ground when she saw the group arrive, a fresh dose of fake blood was poured on her head and face to simulate a head wound. With a brisk morning breeze hitting that side of the island, Pomeroy stayed with her and she could be seen jumping up and down to stay warm while the others ambled up a hill across the island to a beach of the opposite shore.

Sunny and devoid of the strong west wind they left on the other side of the hill, seven victims were given instructions for how to act, including moaning and groaning, and what to tell the rescuers when they began to ask questions about what hurt, and what happened. They then spread across the beach and took up various positions, some in pairs, with some alone and off to the sides.

Their collective story was that they had all somehow swam to shore following the crash the night before, and had huddled on the beach for warmth and to await help. Some were more coherent than others, but all possessed cards that described their vital statistics (pulse, heart rate and oxygen level), age, sex and injuries. This information helped the rescuers determine needs and levels of required care, which they would have determined had they actually had stethoscopes, blood pressure cuffs and basic medicines with them.

Finally, Santheson, Black and Adams took two more victims down a woods road toward the south end of the island. They stopped at a predetermined spot, where a wide hole about 5-feet-deep offered an obscure place to hide. The victims' story was that they had left the others at the beach to try and walk to find help, but failed to see the hole in the darkness and fell in. One of them suffered a compound leg fracture and was unable to walk, and the other, suffering from cold and arthritis pain making it hard to climb out, decided to stay with their injured companion and wait it out.

With the arrival of the SAR group, things seemed to be going as planned, with the group spending a good amount of time organizing, planning and familiarizing themselves with the island's layout. The group eventually set out on foot, but instead of heading toward the road where the first "victim" had been placed between the barns, on a road that would lead them to the beach and the other victims, the group headed north on a woods road where they would stumble on none of the planned action.

Curiously to Santheson, Black and Pomeleau, who were all hanging around inside one of the barns out of site, at least one rescuer on a commandeered golf cart drove past the barn twice and never saw the prone victim between the buildings. The golf cart was also seen going up the hill west toward the beach, but it turned around and came back down, obviously before cresting the hill and finding the other victims.

Eventually, the large group on foot made their way to the beach, where they found the seven victims Santheson and the others thought they would find later in the exercise. As they made their way from victim to victim, they assessed and called out injuries, requested medicines and performed cursory stabilizations, and then prioritized the transport order.

When they had nearly everyone on the beach taken care of, either transporting them off by small boats or by golf cart back across the island, they were told that one of the transporters had discovered an injured person between two barns not far from the dock. Someone from the SAR team broke away from the group and was taken back with a patient toward the dock, and dropped off to tend to that victim.

The remaining SAR members regrouped on the beach and held a brief meeting to determine the numbers of victims they had rescued and transported. There was considerable discussion as to how many they had rescued so far, considering that some had been taken off the beach by boat, some by golf cart to the dock and at least one victim dismissed and hanging around, momentarily unaccounted for.

The arrival of the loading team from the dock helped with the victim accountability, and knowing there were reported to be 15 passengers on the airplane, the group determined they were looking for seven more. It was then brought up that one of the beach victims told a rescuer that two people had left the beach to walk and find help, and that they headed south on the woods road just off the beach.

The SAR group then set about planning to walk the road south, with two people walking alongside the road but 15- or 20-feet into the woods. As they walked slowly, they alternated between one person calling out and another stopping to listen. Eventually a cough followed a call, and that set the rescuers in motion, moving a little quicker up the trail toward the sound. One of the rescuers nearly hustled past the hole, but then something caught her eye, and it was a person. She quickly realized then, it was two people.

Raising her hand in the air with two fingers stretched skyward, she said loudly, "I've got two people here."

This rescue required more ingenuity, as some sort of board was needed to remove the party with the compound leg fracture from inside the hole. A long piece of plywood was found and with many hands, the injured victim was transferred to it, and then lifted up and passed from hand to hand out of the hole.

They were eventually placed on the board on the back of a golf cart and driven with the other victim to the boat dock, while the others set about continuing their search for the remaining five plane passengers.

As the SAR group continued searching the woods, a communication breakdown failed to notify them that the State Police and Coast Guard had earlier recovered five people from the water as part of the exercise. Black let them search for a short time and then told the SAR group this news, bringing the number of total recovered victims to 15 and ending the active exercise on the island.

All told, more than 120 people and 22 local, state and federal agencies participated in Saturday's exercise. Sisk, who was relegated to manning the Emergency Operations Center in the Knox County EMA offices on Union Street in Rockland Saturday, said eight people were assigned to work as evaluators of various pieces of the exercise.

He said Saturday was the sixth exercise in the series, which began last spring with an exercise in jurisdiction, who is responsible for various kinds of incidents, the roles they play and the statute limits on their responsibilities. They also worked out the management part of responding to a disaster, including coordinating roles and eliminating redundancies.

On Monday afternoon, Sisk reflected on Saturday's exercise. "We met all the objectives and figured out where to go in the future," he said. "The exercise helped define training needed for teams and helped set goals for those teams, as well."

Though the Unified Command came together nicely, Sisk said the exercise helped find some areas in communications to work on.

"Accountability was area identified as needing some work, getting those teams to work closer and stay in communication as to who was where the entire time," said Sisk.

Sisk said they won't know all the details of what worked and what didn't until they get all the evaluation sheets back from the eight assigned evaluators. An after-action meeting will be scheduled around Nov. 1, when the entire management group will get back together to review and process the paperwork, and set training goals to work on areas that need to be refined.

"Individually, and teamwise, everybody did great, but we also now know things to do to make it go smoother next time," said Sisk. "There have been five plane crashes in the area in the last four years, and we know with this and future training, we'll be in great shape to respond to any kind of major disaster."

Editorial Director Holly S. Edwards can be reached by email at hollyedwards@penbaypilot.com or by calling 207-706-6655.