Photo by Deb Gau A helicopter from North Memorial Air Care kicks up dust as it lifts off from a gravel road in rural Lincoln County on Wednesday evening.

IVANHOE — There were a few minutes to go before the training drill was set to start, and the “victims” of the mock car crash were going over their roles.

“They crashed into me?” Brenda Full asked, as she sat in the driver’s seat of a wrecked car placed on the edge of a cornfield.

“Yes,” answered Ivanhoe Ambulance co-director Becky Paluch.

Paluch went over the scenario: a drunk driver and passengers in an SUV collided with another vehicle, and the injuries included one victim who had been ejected from the vehicle.

Then a call went out over the dispatch, and it was up to area firefighters and ambulance responders to help the mock victims.

Emergency responders from Lincoln and Yellow Medicine counties held a joint training exercise Wednesday night, at a rural intersection north of Ivanhoe. Paluch said the idea for the mock crash came out of discussions at an ambulance meeting early this year.

“We were thinking that we hadn’t had a drill in a while,” partly because of precautions during the COVID pandemic, Paluch said. Responders were looking for an opportunity to have joint training.

“The goal was to have teamwork here today,” Paluch said.

Multiple agencies took part in the training exercise. Ivanhoe Fire and Ambulance, the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office, and a North Memorial Air Care crew from Redwood Falls were all present at the mock crash scene. Paluch said the Hendricks Ambulance was originally going to take part in the training, but they ended up having a real emergency call to respond to.

Responders went to work as if they were at a real crash site. Firefighters used tools like the Jaws of Life to extricate mock victims from the crashed vehicles, and searched part of the cornfield for the ejected victim. At the same time, ambulance crew members worked to get three of the mock victims ready for transport to a hospital.

Firefighters prepared a landing zone for an Air Care helicopter on Lincoln County Road 18. After the helicopter touched down, responders helped move Full into the aircraft and get her ready for transport.

Paluch said one of the good things about being able to hold a mock crash was that it gave responders a chance to practice different rescue methods.

In one example, firefighters used an extrication method that went through the front of one of the crashed vehicles instead of the door. After the drill was over, responders also stuck around to talk with the helicopter crew. Crew members answered questions about how to set up a landing zone, and what kind of information to provide Air Care in a real emergency.

Joe Gislason, an ambulance crew member from Canby, said it was interesting to get to play the part of one of the crash victims.

“I’ve always been on the other side,” Gislason said.

Paluch said having responders work together was the most important part of the drill.

“In rural areas, we’re very sparse,” she said. With few responders, teamwork was crucial. “At the end of the day, we’re all on a team.”