All heck was erupting at Ottawa Lake, as first responders honed their crafts

What would happen if a homicide, car wreck, missing child and even a nail in an ambulance tire all happened at the same time?

That's what first-responder agencies in north-central Kansas wanted to find out during a simulated emergency this week.

The Ottawa County Sheriff's Department , Bennington Fire and EMS , Minneapolis EMS , Saline County Mounted Patrol dive team, a Kansas Wildlife and Parks game warden and more were at the scene Sunday evening at Ottawa State Fishing Lake for the interagency exercise.

The scenario began about 5:30 p.m. Sunday, with reports of gunshots near the lake's boat ramp.

"It's starting off as a domestic violence shooting," said Ryan Murphy, of the Saline County Mounted Patrol. "It will devolve from there into multiple people getting injured from running away from the gunshots ... and a panicked person getting into a car wreck."

Agencies like Saline County Mounted Patrol work together

While a scenario of this kind and magnitude isn't something any of the agencies want to encounter in real life, if they are able to respond to this, it means it will be easier to prepare for more common smaller-scale incidents.

One of the scenarios at the exercise was a suspect throwing a weapon into the lake. Murphy, who serves as the dive captain for Mounted Patrol, said this kind of exercise is important.

"These are the types of situations we are routinely called out to" he said. "Whether it's with a drowning or evidence search and collection."

Bill Cooke, commander of Saline County Mounted Patrol Rescue Squad, said the exercise went well for his team, with the weapon found quickly.

"We have an underwater metal detector," he said. "A diver can actually put that on, go about 100 meters deep if needed. Of course in Kansas, that's not really necessary."

While the detector wasn't needed for the weapon, there were several shell casings on the ground when responders arrived. Cooke made sure they found them all to put into evidence.

Despite the name, Cooke said the mounted patrol didn't bring any horses for this particular exercise. The patrol does, however, have the capability to bring horses, as well as other less-common resources.

"We have some equipment that not a lot of other agencies have," Cooke said. "We've been as far away as John Redmond (Reservoir) out near Burlington because there was not a dive team in the area. There's not a lot of dive teams (in Kansas)."

Ottawa County Lake exercise a community-wide responder effort

Brian Breese, chief of the Bennington Fire Department, was the incident commander for this particular exercise.

He said he was grateful for the work and collaboration that everyone involved had, particularly since a lot of them, like himself, do this particular response on a volunteer basis.

"(Bennington Fire) is a volunteer service," he said. "Everyone of our firefighters get up in the middle of the night, leave their families and go protect others. That's what we do."

Breese said for his team, training is always an important aspect of what they do to be better, particularly in scenarios like this one.

"It gives you a little more experience, gets you out of that tunnel vision, gets your heart and adrenaline pumping," he said.

He also said it was also good to be able to work with other agencies.

"Most of these people we know," Breese said. "It's within our country. When you know them, it's just like you're brothers."

After the exercise was mostly completed, Breese said he felt like it was a success, with more than 35 total people from several agencies involved.

"It was a pretty good training," he said. "There were a lot of things going on simultaneously. When you were taking care of one situation, a storm was arising somewhere else."

Some of these "storms" included scenarios like of one of the ambulances breaking down with a flat tire, a commander tripping and hurting his ankle, and more.

This article originally appeared on Salina Journal: All heck was erupting at Ottawa Lake, as first responders honed their crafts