A loud beeping came in groups of three while the lights on the wall flashed bright white in strobe-like effect.
“There has been a fire alarm reported in the building,” a soothing female voice said over the Cliff Castle Hotel and Casino loudspeaker, before repeating the statement again. “Please proceed to the stairways and exit the building. Do not use the elevator but proceed to the stairs and exit the building.”
There was no fire in the building. The alarm was going off as part of an emergency response drill held by the casino in conjunction with Copper Canyon Fire and Medical Authority, along with other agencies from the surrounding area, including the Sedona Fire District, Cottonwood Dispatch Center, Camp Verde Marshal’s Office, Yavapai Apache Police Department and Yavapai County’s Office of Emergency Management.
The drill aimed to simulate what would happen if there was a full-scale fire on the third floor of the hotel necessitating an evacuation. Though there was no fire, a smoke machine simulated fire conditions on the third floor — emptied of guests, with volunteers pretending to be fire victims needing rescue.
“We want to make sure that our security officers are highly trained for any kind of disaster that could happen here,” Captain Allen Shamek, training manager for the casino’s security team, said. “So we want to make sure they know what they need to do to get people out of the hotel in the case of a fire. We don’t want to wait until there’s some disaster and say it’s never going to happen here, and then suddenly we’re trip- ping over each other and leaving half of our guests in the hotel for some horrific injuries or death. So what we want to do is we want to practice that. We want to make sure that our policies are correct.”
One of the major focuses of the exercise was to test the ability to evacuate guests who had various disabilities. One volunteer acted out having hearing impairment while several performed inability to walk, forcing the firefighters to carry them out in special chairs.
“I’ve got you. It’s just a little bumpy,” one firefighter told an elderly woman complaining of her faulty leg as he placed her on the chair designed to wheel her down the stairs.
“For big people like me, those chairs are not adequate,” Joseph Chiaravalloti, a volunteer who had face makeup making him look like a severely burned victim during the exercise, said. “They need to make them for bigger people.”
Still, despite his discomfort, Chiaravalloti, who was taken all the way to a helicopter out in the lowerparking lot for the purpose of the exercise, praised the work of the firefighters.
“I think it was great,” Chiaravalloti said. “It was fast. It was a very quick response, very professional. I was impressed they could lug a heavy guy like myself with relative ease.”
“There was a lot of communication,” Lynn Passfield, a volunteer from Yavapai County’s Community Emergency Response Team, said. “They seemed to know what they were doing. They had me wait to the side until they could help me walk downstairs. They were very calming.”
In addition to the stair evacuations, responders tested some of their more advanced technology. A truck from the Sedona Fire District parked outside the building, extending its long ladder up to a third floor window to ensure that victims could be evacuated through it in the case of a real emergency.
Chief Terry Keller of Copper Canyon FMA praised the hotel and casino staff not only for holding the drill, but for how prepared and helpful he found them during the exercise.
“It was surprising to learn how dedicated the casino is, including their housekeeping staff,” Keller said. “You really don’t think of housekeeping staff actually being trained to assist in evacuation. In the casino you have the luxury there, because they have a lot of security personnel. […] Having all those people available to start getting people moving out of the way or out of harm’s way was a benefit. That to me was a surprise that they are training their people to use the stair chair.”
“I’d like to work more with them as we go forward in other future events to make that even more seamless and make sure they keep training their people,” Keller said.
