You are out with your family, spending the day at a lake.

Your children are having fun playing in the water and then, one of them disappears.

Frantic, your husband runs in to try and find them while you call 911 for help.

Lifeguards jump into action and begin their search of the area where the child was last seen.

They find him, unresponsive and begin CPR.

They now turn to attempt to find the child’s father, who has not been seen since entering the water to try and save his child.

Divers are called in and everyone works to find him.

This scenario is one that can happen in the blink of an eye.

Because of that, several area emergency organizations gathered Monday evening at Mauch Chunk Lake Park to conduct a full-scale exercise to practice in the event a drowning occurs at the lake.

“It’s an emergency response exercise for an emergency incident at the swimming area,” Carbon County Emergency Management Agency coordinator Mark Nalesnik said, noting that the incident was a reported two people drowning at the lake.

Nalesnik added that the exercise included all organizations that would normally respond in such an event, including Lehighton Ambulance, Jim Thorpe fire departments and police, Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, Mauch Chunk Lake Park rangers and lifeguards, the county sheriff’s office, Lehighton fire company dive teams, St. Luke’s LifeFlight and county 911 and EMA officials.

“Our main objective is for all the agencies involved to be able to function as a team,” Nalesnik said. “It’s about interoperability among agencies because they don’t often get a chance to get together at a location like this and work an incident together. If they do it as a drill or exercise, when it happens for real, they’ll be much more proficient at it because they have gone through it a time or two in advance. We just want to be prepared.”

Carbon County Commissioner Chris Lukasevich said that the main take-away from the drill is keeping everyone safe.

“First and foremost, we want to assure not only county residents, but visitors to Mauch Chunk Lake Park, and specifically the beach, have a safe, enjoyable experience,” he said, noting that to do that, the park staff and lifeguards need to know their plans in the event someone needs help while at the park.

Last July, a 17-year-old boy drown at the lake during a very busy weekend.

After that, the county began looking at how everyone could be better prepared.

“This is part of that,” he said, adding that other changes included adding a lifeguard supervisor and continued lifeguard trainings and a tabletop exercise to go over what should be done in a drowning event.

Rescue exercise

As the exercise began, lifeguards utilized what they practiced, creating a human line to search the swimming area, locating the one person and bringing them to the beach and start CPR until EMTs arrived.

Further searches brought in the Lehighton fire department dive teams, which used sonar, underwater cameras and divers to locate and recover a manikin that had been submerged just beyond the ropes of the swimming area before bringing the “person” to shore where Jim Thorpe fire department and other rescuers met them.

A landing zone was also set up to allow for the medical helicopter to land.

Following the exercise, responders gathered and went over what they felt went well and what should be worked on.

Ethan Turrano, the lifeguard supervisor, said he felt the response went well.

“We’ve been practicing very often throughout the summer,” he said, adding that this allowed the lifeguards, who are typically high school and college age individuals, to further practice on what to do in this type of situation and how to use the equipment the lake has on hand for emergencies like a drowning.

“Everyone went according to the plan that I developed with the lifeguards and I felt everything went very smoothly,” Turrano said.

Carbon County currently employees 10 lifeguards, as well as the lifeguard supervisor.

David Horvath, park director, commended everyone on the joint effort at the exercise.

“It is extremely important that they gave us the opportunity to not only work with one another, but also to work with other agencies who typically respond to a situation like this,” he said.

Challenges most agencies noted for incidents like this include crowd control during an emergency.

“It can really be challenging when trying to control the scene,” Horvath said, noting that during last year’s drowning, the beach was at capacity, and that makes a response more difficult.

Horvath also commended the lifeguards, as well as all organizations for their cooperation in this exercise.