NEAR POWER — What might’ve looked like a large-scale emergency response unfolding near Power on Tuesday, May 5th, was a carefully planned training scenario.
At the Montana Air National Guard’s Vigilante Drop Zone, a simulated C-130 aircraft crash brought together military personnel, Teton County Sheriff’s Office, Power Volunteer Fire Department, emergency medical services and other partners for a Major Accident Response Exercise — all working through what a real-world aircraft emergency could look like.
Madison Collier reports - watch the video here:
The exercise marked the first time the Guard has used the newly established training site for a MARE, showing that the site has training capabilities beyond airdrop operations.
“This is about more than just responding to an incident,” said Lt. Col. Jason Steichen, the exercise director. “It’s about making sure we’ve established relationships with local first responders and understanding each other’s capabilities before something happens.”
For Steichen, the purpose was to test not only the response itself, but the communication and command structure needed when agencies with different roles, resources and procedures arrive at the same scene.
“We know what their capabilities are. They know what our capabilities are,” Steichen expressed. “And we just want to build that trust between us.”
On the ground, that coordination took shape through a unified command structure, where leaders from different agencies work together to manage the response.
Captain Brett Whitmore with the Montana Air National Guard Fire Department said his role was to serve as a bridge between local responders and the Guard’s resources based out of Cascade County.
“I get with local resources that are the incident commanders, and I advise them what resources I can get from the Guard Base in Cascade County to the scene to help out,” Whitmore explained.
Whitmore said that coordination is especially important in rural areas, where the first responders on scene may be volunteer firefighters or smaller departments with limited personnel.
“Volunteer firefighters are part of our community… they’re everywhere,” Whitmore said. “They don’t necessarily understand the C-130 or the military aspect of it. And so the inter-training and inter-coordination is really big.”
Exercises like this allow agencies to work through those differences to prepare for the possibility of real emergencies. It gives local responders a closer look at the military side of the response, while giving the military a better understanding of what local crews can provide when they arrive.
The exercise also included specialized teams that may be called in after the initial rescue phase.
Addie Lohman with Teton County Search and Rescue brought two human remains detection dogs, Avalanche and Chief, to participate in the exercise.
For Lohman, the training provided something that is difficult to replicate in smaller, routine practice sessions: the noise, movement and pressure of a larger response.
“When we train, we usually train very small groups, mostly just by ourselves,” she said. “So we don’t get the exposure of the lights and the sirens and the people and the commotion.”
That kind of environment matters because real deployments are rarely quiet or controlled. Responders may be moving in and out of the scene, radios may be active, and handlers still have to navigate, communicate and keep their dogs focused.
Lohman said the exercise also allowed her team to work on GPS, navigation and radio communication, pieces that need to function smoothly before a real deployment.
“All of the working pieces have to come together before we get into a real deployment situation,” Lohman said.
The Vigilante Drop Zone itself is a relatively new training asset for the Montana National Guard.
The site, located near Power, was developed to give the Guard a closer in-state location for airdrop training, reducing the need to travel far distances for training operations
Now, with its first major accident response exercise complete, officials say the drop zone is proving to be more than just a place to practice air operations.
“It’s a wide-open area… and we had the opportunity to get a lot of people out here on the scene and get some great training done,” Steichen said.
Following the exercise, the Montana Air National Guard plans to conduct an after-action review to evaluate what worked, what did not and how future training can improve.
Steichen said future exercises could include more personnel and more complex scenarios to better reflect real-world conditions.
“We’ll probably build on that… add more personnel, maybe add more complications to the scenario,” he said.
For those involved, the takeaway goes beyond the simulated crash itself. It is about building familiarity in the case these skills need to be applied in a real-case scenario.
