Preparing for an Airport Disaster

Ed's Note: Rob Lawrence is a featured speaker at EMS World Expo, scheduled for October 3–7 in New Orleans, LA.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) mandates that airports conduct full-scale tests of their airport emergency plan (AEP) every three years.¹ Such drills not only test the AEP, but also create a real-time practice environment for multi-agency, multijurisdictional response coordination that would be necessary in the event of an actual incident. In April 2016, the Richmond International Airport (RIC) in Virginia conducted its AEP exercise against the challenging scenario of an incoming plane that had a run-in with a flock of birds, causing engine failure.

As with real incidents, drills such as this require considerable external resources in addition to onsite airport fire and rescue assets. “This gives us an opportunity to work together for our mutual aid agreement for the metro area and all of our partners to work together and implement the region’s MCI plan,” notes John Fitzgerald, aircraft, rescue & firefighter captain for the Richmond Fire Department.

The exercise itself represented a model of regional cooperation with attendees from:

• RIC Airport Rescue and Fire Fighting and police departments;
• Airline representatives;
• Virginia Department of Emergency Management;
• Federal Aviation Administration (FAA);
• American Red Cross;
• FAA Air Traffic Control Tower (ATC/FAA);
• Transportation Security Administration (TSA);
• Virginia State Police;
• Virginia Department of Health (including Medical Examiner’s office);
• Virginia Department of Fire Programs;
• Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT).

Fire, EMS and CERT teams from the metro Richmond area also converged to exercise their mutual aid commitment. The event itself tested a number of phases in the response to the major incident developing on the RIC runway.

The Initial Response

The initial chaos of any aircraft crash landing requires a number of activities to occur simultaneously. Fire suppression involving copious amounts of foam layer the site, which in itself creates hazards as seen in the Asiana Airlines tragedy in San Francisco when a responding engine hit and killed a foam-covered passenger. Once on the ground, the airplane crew will endeavor to deploy escape slides and evacuate able-bodied passengers. This poses several hazards as responders must immediately ensure disoriented passengers are directed or led to a point of safety. In many aircraft incidents, passengers disperse across the airfield, creating further hazards.

For those unable to exit the aircraft and for firefighting purposes, an internal attack and patient extrication may be necessary, which again requires considerable knowledge, skill and coordination. All immediate functions are the sole responsibility of the airport’s fire and rescue services and occur before mutual aid arrives on scene in the seconds and minutes after an event. The opening phase of the RIC exercise put the airport’s own resources fully to the test with the realistic scenario including live flames to extinguish.

Establishing Command and Control

With the declaration of an airfield major incident, as in the case of the RIC exercise, operational support and mutual aid began to roll in. A range of support reported to various locations on the airfield. Fire and EMS all reported to the designated airfield crash gate and were directed toward the staging area, while emergency management and law enforcement reported to the designated unified command. Roles and responsibilities and a common emergency language are contained within the National Incident Management System (NIMS).

Agencies within the metro Richmond area have an added advantage in that they exercise those processes and principles regularly at such events as the biannual NASCAR series, the Richmond Marathon or last year’s UCI World Cycling Championships. The largest level of mutual support, providing position specific incident managers, was from Henrico County Division of Fire, the jurisdiction in which RIC sits. The division’s deputy coordinator of emergency management, Anna McRay, played a major role in the development of the exercise and the ultimate success of the day. McRay also brought many willing volunteers from her CERT team to act as passengers and simulated casualties. On the day, 150 moulaged volunteers participated.

Triage

Back at the crash scene, with mutual aid units pulling in, casualties started to pass through triage areas and were loaded onto waiting ambulances or ambu-buses.

As with every major incident patient tracking is a vital task both to inform as to the location of passengers who have now become patients and maintain the tally of how many START triaged patients went to which hospital and level of trauma center.

The establishment of solid communications is a necessity, particularly to inform the organization providing hospital medical control. In the RIC/Metro Richmond system, the medical control function is performed by the Virginia Commonwealth University, which identifies the destination hospital based on trauma level, bed state and overall capacity to accept patients.

Families

An essential part of the exercise was the opening of a Family Assistance Center. This essential function is located away from the glare of the media and any other person armed with a cell phone.
The center operated in conjunction with the airline owning the aircraft in jeopardy, as well as the Red Cross. Families and friends can be made comfortable and receive situation briefings. The exercising of this center was seen as a necessary and integral part of the exercise.

Transition to Investigation

After the casualties are cleared and fires extinguished, the remains of both aircraft and passengers are considered a crime scene for the purposes of the initial investigation. In a real incident, many agencies are required to investigate various facets of the scene from the FAA and NTSB through to the FBI and state police. Training and live scenarios require the understanding as to when the phase changes from that of rescue to recovery. This is created by the effective use of liaison officers from each agency within the unified command that maintain information flow in their own discrete channels and with each other.

Conclusion

In the aftermath of the RIC exercise, a number of after-action reviews took place. The assessors from each phase of the drill were content that the region has a robust plan and approach to an incident at RIC. The opportunity for agencies to conduct interoperability training both cross discipline and by jurisdiction continued to develop good relationships.

Reference

1. Federal Aviation Regulations. Airport Emergency Plans (AEPs). https://www.risingup.com/fars/info/part139-325-FAR.shtml.

Rob Lawrence, MCMI, is chief operating officer of the Richmond Ambulance Authority. Before coming to the USA in 2008 to work with RAA, he held the same position with the English county of Suffolk as part of the East of England Ambulance Service. He is a member of EMS World’s editorial advisory board and host of the Word on the Street podcast.