Saturday's Emergency at Smith Reynolds Airport Only a Drill

If you're near Smith Reynolds Airport in Winston Salem this Saturday between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m., don't be alarmed if you see a lot of emergency vehicles.  August Vernon, Operations Manager for the Forsyth County office of Emergency Management, says it's a full-scale disaster drill all airports are required to do every three years.

Vernon says these activities are necessary because they help responders be ready when real emergencies happen.

"We did have a plane crash within the city limits this past year," he says. "We had the incident where the aircraft made an emergency landing at PTI this week. We've had airplanes that had to make emergency landings at Smith Reynolds, so these are all some of the reasons why they have to do this kind of training."

Vernon says local emergency management responders do training at the airport every year, but because this is a larger than normal drill, he wants people in the area to understand it's not a real emergency.