BRIDGEPORT, W.Va. (WBOY) — Bridgeport emergency responders were able to hone their skills Wednesday evening as they partnered with the North Central West Virginia Airport to host an emergency response drill.

Officials with the city said the exercise was “full scale,” meaning that the participating agencies were acting out a response to a simulated emergency situation. The drill was a two-hour exercise focused on a hostage situation at the airport. The FAA requires airports to hold full-scale emergency response drills every three years.

“This tested everybody’s capabilities to respond to an incident here at the airport. We had simulated patients we had simulated fire, so we simulated basically a real incident here at the airport that would have to be handled by first responders,” said Timothy Curry, Director of Emergency Management for the City of Bridgeport.

Much of the drill took place at the airport with some patients transported to the emergency department at United Hospital Center.

“It’s important to train like you’re gonna fight someday, and hopefully we never have an incident here, but you know the overreaching messages we need to train in a way that represents a real threat that we might face here. So, getting everybody together, working through a problem, and then what we’re gonna do next is we’re gonna go upstairs and we’re gonna talk about it and see what we can do better,” Curry said.

Emergency officials said hospital operations were not affected because of the exercise, and flights to and from the airport were not affected either.