Scared-As-Hell-Airlines Flight No. 666 was coming in for a landing on the main runway at the Casper-Natrona County International Airport when it collided with a small plane about 8:15 a.m. Saturday.

Help came, painfully slow and deliberately cruel.

The collision ignited an 2,000-degree inferno, sending a twisting pillar of fire and smoke hundreds of feet into the clear Wyoming sky during a county-organized disaster drill at the "burn pit" where diesel fuel stoked the fire of a mock fuselage.

Scores of the walking wounded, the maimed, the critically injured, the dead and parts thereof were strewn around the gravel lot at the burn pit.

Among the living, some screamed, some cried. One walked aimlessly as he carried his severed left arm with his right hand, a pregnant woman in her eighth month complained of severe abdominal cramps, and some victims just mumbled as they drifted in and out of consciousness.

The approximately 60 participants in the victims' roles included Natrona County High School students in the Junior ROTC program, Explorer Post No. 1 of the Natrona County Sheriff's Office, and volunteers with the Community Emergency Response Team.

Responders included the firefighters from the airport, Bar Nunn, Casper and county fire protection district; the sheriff's office, the Casper-Natrona County Health Department and the Salvation Army.

The airport's massive crash truck got to the scene first, and navigated its way around the carnage not stopping to aid anyone but to extinguish the blaze.

Meanwhile, Natrona County Sheriff's deputies exited their vehicles and ambled - not running nor even stepping quickly - toward and among the casualties.

The injured took notice.

"Nobody's going to help us," screamed Stephanie McBeath-Vandamme one. "We're going to die; they're ignoring us."

Crews from the Natrona County Fire Protection District arrived, and they moved a bit faster than the deputies.

Even so, they spent what seemed to be an agonizing amount of time talking to each other and on their radios.

Finally, the deputies and firefighters began escorting the walking wounded to a corner of the disaster drill site.

A hysterical Aleca Simpson was walked to the group, then bolted to run back to the burned corpse of her sister. Two deputies grab her by each arm and take her back to the group with a warning to not leave again.

As the group of survivors grew in size the responders to the disaster began - again unhurriedly - to separate them into three groups: "red" or those needing immediate and critical care with injuries such as shock and bad bleeding; "yellow" or those with serious but non-life threatening injuries such as open fractures; and "green" or the walking wounded with lacerations and bruises.

The emergency crews broke out their bags of supplies and placed some victims in neck braces, applied ice packs and bound the wounds of others.

The firefighting, triage, the treatment seemed to take a long time.

Deliberate and cruel

And that was deliberate.

"It does seem cruel," said Lt. Stew Anderson of Natrona County Emergency Management, who oversaw the exercise.

The first job centers on putting out the fire to avoid further casualties, Anderson said.

The deputies and firefighters didn't run to help for several very good reasons, he said.

They walk to assess the entire scene, which enables them to determine their wisest course of action, Anderson said. "You don't get tunnel vision."

If responders succumb to that tunnel vision and start running toward apparent survivors, they get distracted and try to care for one victim so much they forget about others who may need more help, or they may misplace their equipment such as first-aid kits, he said.

Saturday, the responders did well, Anderson said. "They ignored the temptation to help people. … Responders do the best for the most."

Because the responders were short-handed, they had to set up field treatment areas instead of waiting for ambulances, he said.

Yet some of the crash victims thought the responders could have done more.

Most victims had cards describing their injuries - so responders knew what to do - and what the victims' behavior should be at the scene.

Simpson and McBeath-Vandamme have participated in numerous disaster drills as members of the Community Emergency Response Team, and they thought responders could have paid more attention to the needs described on their cards, they said.

As the drill came to a close, responders had not looked at Beath-Vandamme's wound, nor treated Simpson for going into shock, they said.

"We tried, they didn't try back," Simpson said.

Eric Hale, a Junior ROTC student at Natrona County High School, was in the red triage area with a neck brace to stabilize a fractured skull.

He had a real-life neck brace experience six years ago when the bus taking him to Paradise Valley Elementary School hit a milk truck, giving him a concussion.

Hale, too, thought the firefighters and sheriff's office could have been more earnest and serious.

"The responders should treat it (the disaster drill) as a real thing," he said. "They should act as if the people actually are wounded."

Anderson heard similar concerns during the debriefing after the drill.

One victim told Anderson he was bleeding from his cheek and calling for help, he said.

Anderson told him his bleeding and yelling meant he was breathing so the responders went to the ones who weren't breathing, he said.

"It's a matter of how triage is done," Anderson said. "To be a victim bleeding, it seems like hours."

Reach Tom Morton at (307) 266-0592, or at Tom.Morton@trib.com.