Planes flew overhead, as usual, Thursday at Vance Air Force Base. Airmen went about their normal routines.

An officer walked to the commissary while some airmen played a game of pickup basketball.

The outward calm belied the tragedy that occurred hours earlier on base.

The sounds of gunshots broke the early morning calm in a building on the base’s south side. An unnamed suspect, an active duty military member, turned a gun on fellow airmen in a heart-stopping scenario known as “active shooter.”

Vance’s security forces responded, the base was locked down, training was halted and the suspect was arrested, but not before one airman was killed and 14 were wounded.

Lest you wonder why this newspaper carried no screaming front page headlines about this horrible event, and nothing was on the radio or television news about it, there is one simple reason. It never happened.

The whole scenario was an exercise, a rehearsal, a practice.

Vance’s 71st Flying Training Wing conducts a number of exercises every year, covering all manner of natural and man-made disasters.

They drill on how to handle aircraft accidents, tornadoes, chemical spills, train wrecks and truck bombs, just to mention a few. If it is bad and could happen on or around a military facility, they practice dealing with it.

The men and women at Vance rehearse so that if, God forbid, something tragic really happens, they will be prepared to handle it and won’t merely learn as they go, will be able to act, not simply react.

All exercises are evaluated, studied and dissected to determine where things went right and where they didn’t. This is the time, after all, to make mistakes, not when something truly catastrophic happens.

This particular exercise was somewhat different in that they asked an outsider to take part. A civilian was brought in to pretend to be a veteran, hard-nosed, no-nonsense, just the facts ma’am newspaper reporter asking all the hard questions and making the wing brass sweat.

They chose me. It was a bit of a stretch, but I managed.

I was escorted on base and given the chance to interview Col. Roger Witek, vice commander of 71st Flying Training Wing.

The goal was to see how wing leadership reacted to the natural media scrutiny that would accompany a disaster involving the base. I hope it helped them, I know it helped me. I know there were some questions I forgot to ask. But that’s what exercises are for, to learn.

Tuesday at 10:15 a.m. Oklahoma Office of Homeland Security is joining Federal Emergency Management Agency for what it is calling the Great Central ShakeOut.

The event is a public earthquake drill in nine states across the central U.S., including Oklahoma. At 10:15 a.m. Tuesday, National Weather Service will send an alert through the NOAA Weather Radio system, and participants will be asked to drop to the ground, take cover by getting under a sturdy desk or table and hold on to it until the shaking stops. Prior to last fall such a drill might have seemed silly to those of us in Oklahoma, but after the state was hit by a series of earthquakes, the largest registering 5.6 on the Richter Scale, it makes perfect sense.

Does your family have a disaster plan? Not covering normal family catastrophes like Rover gobbling the standing rib roast right before your in-laws come to dinner, or 3-year-old Susie getting a notion to take off down the street wearing only a smile just when the preacher comes to visit, but real disasters like tornadoes, fires and the like.

Say it is 4 a.m., you’re snoring away, drooling on your pillow with visions of super models dancing in your head, when the smoke alarm goes off. What is the first thing you should do? And what about the kids, do they know what to do?

What about when Gary England says those fateful words “large tornado on the ground,” followed by the name of your fair city. What then?

Certainly we all hope nothing bad ever will happen to our homes or our families, but it behooves to have a plan of how to respond if something ever does.

In the case of fire, develop a home fire escape plan that includes locating two exits, usually a door and a window, from each room. Also, pick a safe meeting place for your family after you get out.

If there is a tornado warning, get into a storm shelter. If you don’t have one, get into an interior room with no outside walls. Take blankets, pillows, helmets (if you have them), a flashlight and a battery powered radio. Then cover up and sit tight until the danger passes.

It would be a good idea to hold regular family fire and tornado drills. You will undoubtedly learn something, knowledge you pray you will never, ever have to use.

The folks at Vance don’t take time practicing for disasters because these exercises are a pleasant diversion from their regular jobs, but they are all too aware of the saying, “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.”

And in the case of a tornado or someone shooting innocent people, failure carries the ultimate price.



Mullin News & Eagle senior writer. Email him at jmullin@enidnews.com.