Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Simulated Jet Crash on Highway Tests Emergency Response : Mock disaster: Air Force and county personnel race to the site for a four-hour exercise that closes part of the roadway. On scale of 1 to 10, the crews rate 8.5.

The control tower at U.S. Air Force Plant 42 here got the word at 10 a.m.: Mayday. Seconds later, an F-15 fighter jet smashed to the ground on Sierra Highway, hitting two cars on the busy road and exploding.

But this was only a test.

To prepare emergency workers for a major accident such as a plane crash, Los Angeles County and Air Force officials staged the mock disaster under cloudy skies Monday--complete with burning bits of debris, smashed cars and pesky onlookers.

“This is a very probable-type accident,” said Air Force Lt. Col. Peter Drinkwater. “So we want to be ready.”

Monday’s exercise tested the abilities of Edwards Air Force Base’s emergency crews, Plant 42’s contract firefighters and security officers as well as the Los Angeles County Fire, sheriff’s and coroner’s departments to work together.

The event marked the first time that Plant 42 and Edwards, which regularly house each other’s planes, took part in such a simulation, Air Force officials said. In Monday’s simulation, the F-15 was supposed to belong to Edwards.

The scenario set up for the fake accident was a complicated one and far more serious than any that has happened in real life at Edwards, Drinkwater said.

According to the scenario, an F-15 hits a flock of birds just after takeoff, causing the plane to lose control and plummet from the sky, explained Tech. Sgt. Felix Francis, who organized the simulation.

Both the pilot and the co-pilot eject from the fighter, but the pilot dies when he is hit by a station wagon on the ground and the co-pilot suffers head injuries and wanders around the crash site, dazed.

Three civilians are killed and three more are injured and trapped. The driver of the station wagon that hit the pilot also suffers head injuries and is wandering around like the co-pilot.

Making matters worse, three teen-age looky-loos romp about the crash site taking pictures with their pocket cameras and collecting pieces of classified debris.

It was at such a chaotic scene that 150 emergency workers arrived in dozens of fire engines, police cars and ambulances--none of them knowing quite what to expect since the plan had been kept secret until Monday morning.

An evaluation team in red caps watched the workers and graded their responses.

Plant 42 firefighters were first on the scene. They smashed through a breakaway gate and over train tracks within five minutes of the initial distress call, locating the crash by tracking the trails of smoke that curled above the desert floor.

Together with Edwards emergency teams and county firefighters, some used massive metal cutters to extricate dummy victims from mangled cars while others fought the fires from the different crashes.

A dental expert from Edwards was brought out to inspect the scattered teeth found near the dead pilot to confirm his identity.

“He’s the pilot,” said Bruce Ballinger, superintendent of the dental squadron, pointing to the dummy that lay sprawled across the hood of a station wagon. “He parachuted out and was snagged by the car and got dragged. He’s a hurting puppy right now.”

Meanwhile, sheriff’s deputies closed part of Sierra Highway and rounded up the fake onlookers, confiscating film from their cameras.

After the nearly four-hour exercise, officials from Los Angeles County, Plant 42 and Edwards met to discuss the operation.

“We really discovered that we have some weak areas in information,” Drinkwater said, who rated the overall mock response at 8.5 on a scale of 1 to 10. “This is a matter of who holds the ball, and for how long and who to hand it off to.”

Lt. Col. Pat McClellan, one of the evaluators for Edwards, agreed that communication was the “big bugaboo,” but said she was nonetheless pleased with the results.

“All the forces responded, got there, did their job and that’s the bottom line,” she said.

One idea that surfaced at the meeting, Drinkwater said, was to create large rubber mats inscribed with the name of each of the nine emergency agencies. When workers needed to be briefed, a light would flash at the command post and emergency staff would gather at their respective mats for the information each needs.

“We aren’t happy with an 8.5. We want a 10,” Drinkwater said.