A group of volunteers from Devils Lake joined airport director Dominic Eritano (far right) in a training simulation on Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2025. (Photos submitted by Connie Hanson, Kathy Lovseth & Harris Saele)
DL Airport Stages Training Exercise, Accident Simulation
Dominic Eritano, director of the Devils Lake Regional Airport, provided information about a Triannual Exercise that was held last week at the airport.
A number of volunteers from Devils Lake, 13 people in all, participated in the “real-to-life” simulation of an emergency of an aircraft crash at the airport. They each were “assigned” an injury and received life-like make up to simulate wounds, etc.
Eritano explained, “What we wanted to learn from this is to see in case of an actual emergency what is something we need to improve on so we can be more prepared if an accident [of this nature] ever occurs.”
The DL Airport Director added, “With this the only thing I would have to report would be the exercise went extremely well, and we learned a lot of things from the exercise about our readiness and what would maybe happen if an event like this ever occurred.”
Periodically the airport utilizes training like this to help ensure readiness in the event of an accident. A few years ago the Journal participated in one such exercise where a toxic chemical was released into the air surrounding the airport and the “nosey reporter” from the Devils Lake Journal [me] reportedly did not survive in the end. Thankfully, it was merely a simulation, not reality.
