HURON – An eyewitness report of a car that had gone into Ravine Lake drew first responders from multiple agencies and counties Saturday in a regional dive team exercise.
“There’s not a county within Region 6 that doesn’t have some sort of large lake or large body of water, and so this is a good chance not only for the dive teams, but for emergency managers that don’t have dive teams, to see how the dive team works and interacts with them,” said Dave Beintema, Region 6 coordinator for the state Office of Emergency Management.
About 30 emergency personnel from 10 counties drilled for several hours on the east side of the lake in Huron.
Four of the 10 counties have dive teams, but only two – from Huron and Mitchell – were able to participate.
The teams and emergency management personnel, law enforcement officers and emergency medical technicians responded to the call of the car in the lake just as they would in a real-life situation.
In a simulated media briefing, Kingsbury County Emergency Management Director Cindy Bau, in a role as public information officer, said that the witness reported seeing the car go into the lake at about 9:32 a.m. Saturday. The witness told authorities that it appeared people were in the vehicle.
In the first scenario, members of the Beadle County Dive Team and two ambulance services arrived minutes later.
First responders in a boat located the car about 100 feet out in the water, and about eight feet deep.
Divers removed two people from the car and brought them to shore where they were lifted into an ambulance and transported to Huron Regional Medical Center.

EMTs reported poor vital signs en route to the hospital, but both were revived, Bau told the media.
“It was still within the ‘golden hour’ of them going into the water,” she said.
People have a good chance of being revived if rescued within that first hour in a drowning situation, she said.
In the second scenario, divers from the Davison County Search and Rescue Team also removed two people from the car, but it was a recovery mission as they were both deceased, Bau said.
Representatives from all 10 counties – from Brookings to Beadle counties and south to Yankton County in southeast South Dakota – participated in the exercise.
“The basic premise of the training is just overall preparedness for local agencies, fire, police, emergency management, just to have that coordination and response to these types of incidents,” Beintema said.
Scenarios that responders drill on are situations that county emergency managers believe are ones that they need more training on, he said.
It’s the first time since he has been with the Office of Emergency Management that all 10 counties have drilled together. The Saturday event involved not only dive team operations, but an emergency operations center as well.
“We may see two or three counties teaming up for a full-scale exercise within the region, but we’ve never had anything where we had all 10 counties,” Beintema said.
Each county is required by the state to do at least one local exercise a year.
Simulations have included real-life possibilities such as airplane crashes, school bus accidents, pipeline disasters, active shooter scenarios, a hazardous materials spill, train derailment, tornado, portable meth lab and a diving exercise.
As the controller and evaluator of Saturday’s exercise, Beintema observed what went well and what the responders need to work on, both individually and as a team.
“With any exercise, there’s always going to be some hiccups in the beginning,” he said, adding that it’s his role to nudge it along.
“It’s not a lack of capability, it’s just a lack, I would say, of more uncertainty than anything,” he said.
“In a real incident, we know we have a car in the water, people are in there, first responders know what to do,” Beintema said. “But we get to an exercise like this and it becomes, OK, I know what to do, but I’m going to wait until somebody tells me to do it.”
He said he was happy to see people from multiple agencies and different counties handle communications very well.
“A lot of times, unfortunately, communications, even in a real scenario or training, is probably one of the most lacking, and that’s just because we get into our zones and start to do things and forget to talk to other people,” he said.