Firefighters from the south valley respond to a simulated rollover accident and hazardous waste spill Wednesday at the Woodside sewer treatment plant in Hailey. The firefighters knew a training exercise would take place, but were surprised to find a tanker truck rolled over on a minivan filled with passengers pinned inside the wreckage. The Hailey Fire Department, Wood River Fire and Rescue and the Bellevue Fire Department sent a total of five trucks and 25 firefighters to the site. A perimeter was formed before personnel stabilized the vehicles with braces and went to work extracting victims using electric and hydraulic tools. About an hour later, four “survivors” (actually crash test dummies) were taken to safety, one of whom would have been life-flighted by helicopter to a hospital had the incident been a real accident. Two of the dummies were deemed fatally injured in the mock emergency. Hailey Fire Chief Craig Aberbach, who organized the training drill, said a thorough analysis of the response teams’ actions will be used to evaluate the departments’ capabilities and prepare future trainings. Photo by Roland Lane