NATCHEZ — Seven people were critically injured Tuesday at 9:30 a.m. when a school bus lost control and crashed into a natural gas line at Delta BioFuels, leaking natural gas and exposing passengers to dangerous sodium metholate chemical — but not for real.

Even though the bus crash was staged, the gas leak sound was simulated and the passengers’ injured limbs and exposed guts can probably be found at a Halloween costume headquarters, the emergency preparation drill is an important practice in communication between different local and state agencies, Emergency Management Director Stan Owens said.

It is not every day local firemen and law enforcement team up with search and rescue program members, the Department of Environmental Quality, the National Weather Service, liaisons of both local hospitals and other responders to decontaminate 15 passengers, one bus driver supposedly suffering from a heart attack and one Delta BioFuels employee from chemicals.

Responders also had to worry about the possibility of an explosion after it took 20 minutes to “manually turn off” the gas leak.

According to the drill’s plan, a school bus holding Alcorn State University nursing students crashed into a gas line after its driver suffered a heart attack, and in the process it also clobbered and burst a 55-gallon barrel of sodium metholate.

Drill Access Security Control and Plant Administrator Johnna Gandy said the chemical is used in the process of making oil at the plant, making it a realistic threat in the event of a similar accident.

Natchez Regional liaison Amy Campbell said the sodium metholate can irritate skin, cause respiratory damage, and even prove fatal depending on the amount of exposure.

While no dangerous chemicals were actually poured, inhaled, or ingested at Tuesday’s drill, a simulation of a decontamination station at the plant gave practice to the first responders involved.

Firemen loaded passengers with gory, rubbery injured legs, arms and even some stomach guts out from the bus and placed them on backboards to transport them through the “warm zone,” which Owens said was considered contaminated and dangerous.

At that point the students, many who kept up their fake wheezing or limping, walked through a plastic tarp designed to catch water, where firemen hosed them off with no water at all and pretended to scrub them down with brushes attached to long sticks.

The students then were brought or walked nearby a line of ambulances, where medical professionals used triage to transport those in the most critical condition to Natchez Community Hospital and Natchez Regional Medical Center.

Owens said in a real emergency, the triage would separate the critical cases between hospitals to prevent one hospital from being overwhelmed or understaffed.

While it was just a drill, officials took the practice seriously and acted professionally and swiftly.

Owens said the annual drill helps different agencies and hospital personnel correlate their efforts to work toward one goal — the safety and survival of those in need and also of those trying to help.

He said the biggest issue in disasters the magnitude of those practiced in drills is communication, Owens said.

Owens said in observing the efforts of everyone involved in the drill — and partially due to the annual practice from the drill — communication has improved over the years.

“Most definitely, we’ve gotten so much better at communicating,” Owens said.