THIS IS ONLY A TEST | Local disaster drill set April 26

It’s been about six weeks since a small aircraft lost power shortly after take-off from Gladewater Municipal Airport – local emergency responders will be honing their playbook this month to be ready for the next such scenario.
Fortunately, the pilot in February was able to circle back and, after a hard landing off-runway, recover from his injuries and go on to fly another day. A future episode might not end as well, potentially sending rescuers into wilder terrain, and City of Gladewater personnel want to be prepared.
Gladewater Fire Department and the Gregg County Composite Squadron of the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) are partnering for a full-scale disaster drill April 26, with two search-and-rescue exercises in their sights – a downed aircraft and a lost boat on the Sabine River.
“We should be able to test our response capabilities,” GFD Chief Mike Simmons told council members last month. Simmons, who also serves as the city’s Emergency Management Coordinator, addressed the local elected officials alongside Paul Hall, Operations Officer for the local CAP. “The plan is to make it an annual event.”
In the near future, Gladewater will serve as the first key entry point for the Sabine River Paddling Trail, making a river rescue here all the more likely. GFD personnel have already been training for such incidents, and the coming ‘lost boat’ drill will take preparations to another level.
“We would like to bring between 100 and 150 people out to the lake. They will be split up – half of those people you may never see,” Hall said, including as many as 100 teenage CAP trainees, ages 12-18. “Part of our program is to gather up high school-age kids and put them in community service, put them in airplanes, see how far we can push them and how great they’ll become.”
The first drill April 26 is also going to test GFD’s ‘Bucket Brigade’ volunteer emergency management group, Simmons said.
“We’re going to run it as real-world as possible in a training environment,” he added, with the CAP members camping at Lake Gladewater. “We’re going to run it like we would if we had a true disaster – them coming in, staging their people.
“There will be a lot of activity in town that day.”
When the drill moves to the downed aircraft scenario, locals will likely note increased activity in the air as planes work to spot the staged crash, courtesy of CAP.
“They’ve acquired an old aircraft,” Simmons noted, as well as the hand tools and other equipment that will be needed to ‘rescue’ the occupants. “I don’t know where the ‘downed aircraft’ is going to be, they’re going to hide it.”
In addition to the rescue tasks, the event will test the logistics of feeding the massed group of CAP members. The organizers anticipate an even larger operation in 2026, hopefully incorporating more county and state personnel, the kind of crowd one could see after a large-scale disaster such as a flood or tornado.
Importantly, Simmons noted, locals need to keep their distance from the drill’s operations – as they should in an actual incident.
“It’s not going to be for public attendance,” he added. “We don’t want a ton of people at the airport; we’re not going to interfere with airport operations.
“The Civil Air Patrol’s going to have their training objectives that they’re busy doing, we’re going to have our training objectives we’re busy doing. We’re not going to have anybody to show people around.”