What follows is a drill. It was only a drill.

A two-car accident Thursday morning claimed the life of a married couple and left their two children in critical condition at an area hospital.

The couple’s vehicle struck a pickup truck transporting a hazardous material, hydrogen peroxide, and caused the chemicals to spill alongside Dallas County Road 29.

Once the chemical was contained, officials responding to the accident also found a shake-and-bake meth lab in the back of vehicle.

The fictitious couple was played by Selma Fire Chief Mike Stokes and Dallas County Emergency Management Agency Director Rhonda Abbott.

The accident and meth lab were part of a simulated training exercise, helped largely by a $25,000 grant from the Alabama Department of Transportation, designed to help local emergency response agencies fine-tune their response skills in the event of an actual emergency in Dallas County.

“It gives all the different disciplines and the different agencies that are represented here an opportunity to work together in simulated training so if we did have an accident, it wouldn’t be our first time to have done this together,” Stokes said. “The exercise they did here today is also important because it’s pretty close to being what something in our community could be — a farm tanker, a passenger vehicle with a shake-and-bake meth lab in the back — that’s quite feasible to happen here.”

More than 15 local, regional, state and federal agencies, including the Dallas County Volunteer Fire Department, the Demopolis Fire and Rescue Department, the Alabama State Troopers and more, participated in Thursday’s exercise.

“We had a tremendous turnout by responders,” Abbott said. “Of all the situations that we have exposed here today, I think that everybody has learned something to take back with them. Most importantly, we know what our weaknesses are and can begin working to improve in those areas.”

Carl Johnson, assistant chief with the Demopolis Fire and Rescue Department, said he thought the event had positive results for all agencies involved.

“Selma and Demopolis are building a relationship where we can mitigate some of the responses that happen out on our roadways,” Johnson said. “It’s a privilege to come here, we loved coming here and it was great to see all the different units here mesh and work well together.”

Abbott said the event was not intended to be a pass-fail exercise, but rather, something the agencies could learn from in the event of an actual hazardous materials spill.