VIDEO/PHOTO: If you saw smoke on the horizon near the Central Wisconsin Airport Tuesday, no need to panic.
It was all part of a training exercise to refresh the airport staff on emergency skills.
"We have an FAA approved mobile simulator that goes all around the country and it has this live fire that is propane derived so when the fire trucks show up, they spray their water and they're able to practice as if it was in a real life scenario," said Louis Kurtz, owner of ARFF Specialists, who lead the training. "It's as close to if a plane were to crash for a training as it possibly could be." The training was part of a once a year requirement for airports. Thankfully officials at CWA have never run into a real scenario like the ones they saw today.
"Just last week we had a flat tire, so we responded to that," said airport director Brian Grefe. "We've had an airplane go off the runway... so luckily it's just been small incidents."