At approximately 10 a.m. Sunday, a Boston medivac helicopter landed smack-dab in the middle of Oak Bluffs’ Waban Park.
The landing was part of a mass casualty incident drill conducted with the Oak Bluffs, Edgartown, Tisbury and West Tisbury fire and emergency services departments and their marine rescue and dive teams. The drill, meant to simulate a jet ski crashing into a boat, also included the United States’ Coast Guard.
“In a realistic event of this size and magnitude, those are the agencies that would be involved in something like this,” Oak Bluffs fire chief John Rose said after the event.
The drill began at 9 a.m., as the Oak Bluffs fire department dropped off two volunteers at the end of the Inkwell jetty. Over the course of the next hour, Coast Guard boats, as well as vessels from the Edgartown and Tisbury fire and police departments zipped around the scene, surveying the wreckage — or lack thereof — and analyzing the situation.
Eventually, the West Tisbury marine rescue team picked up the “survivors,” who pretended to be limp-limbed, and hauled them into the belly of the boat. In the meantime, the Oak Bluffs fire department prepared for an evacuation onshore, setting up a fire truck adjacent to Waban Park. About 15 minutes later, the medivac helicopter promptly touched down and picked up a patient, who was flown to the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital.
“It went fantastic,” Oak Bluffs fire chief John Rose said after the drill. “We had a bunch of goals that we wanted to achieve with that drill, and we were able to exercise and practice all of them.”
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