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CT Regional Airport's Full Scale Exercise

Yesterday April 26, 2011 the East Haven and New Haven CT Fire Departments along with the TWEED airport personnel, American Medical Response, Hospital of St Raphael's, Yale New Haven Hospital, The American Red Cross, East Haven and New Haven Police Dept's, CT State Police, FBI, ATF and many more agencies and organizations collaborated to conduct a Full Scale Exercise at the TWEED Regional Airport which sits on property in New Haven and East Haven CT.

This drill simulated a commuter plan with 53 passengers that had an on board explosion while on approach. During the emergency landing the aircraft collided with a construction vehicle completing runway maintenance resulting in 59 patients and part of the aircraft catching fire.

For the realization of the drill we utilized high school drama students which were all except 5 (that were triaged dead) were triaged, treated and transported to two local hospitals. All of the victim had injuries assigned and moulaged appropriately. The injuries were specific to this type of incident and included all categories of the SMART Triage system.

You will see in the pictures the fire and debris field of victims were spread out for the safety of the victims. The fuel for the fire included a vehicle (construction vehicle) and a boat (aircraft) (which was what the airport acquired to simulate the burning wreckage). We utilized a school bus and FD pick up truck within the victim debris field so rescuers had some additional challenges with triage, treatment and movement to treatment areas.

In addition to the crash we worked with local pyro-tech professional who orchestrated a secondary explosive devise in a dumpster near the EMS transport egress.

We had great success in putting our emergency plans in place and working with the many agencies and the many facets of the complicated scenario. Attributing to the success is the yearly practice of these incidents. Each year we conduct a table top exercise and every three years we conduct a full scale exercise (All part of the airports FAA certification). We would not have the successes if it wasn't for getting everyone around the table every year to prepare.

So here is my question for discussion..... Do you train with some, any, all, more or less of the agencies listed above? What are you SOP's for incidents like this? When were they last reviewed and/or practiced? When was the last time you had all of the main players in the same room for discussions and/or a table top exercise? Do you have a plane crash procedure? You don't have to have a airport in your district to have an incident. In fact many aircraft emergencies and crashes happen on private non-airport property.

Please see the following link for an extensive library of pictures of the drill and get out of the firehouse and train!

http://jranderson.photoshelter.com/gallery/G0000A0WIPPW3Eo8

Go make it safe brother and sisters through training!

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Permalink Reply by Assistant Chief Billy Greenwood on April 28, 2011 at 7:44am

Just curious because it sounds like you have a multi-jurisdictional response area due to geographics, who is in charge of a large scale incident at Tweed? Would the Incident Commander be from Tweed, East or New Haven?

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Permalink Reply by P.J. Norwood on April 28, 2011 at 2:20pm

It ends up working out well when the IC's use a unified command and work side by side managing the incident. East Haven and New Haven are very different departments in many ways. The IC role is unified by the Chief and Asst Chief of the two departments and the operations rols ends up being either the officer from New Haven's first due or from East Haven's BC (shift commander)

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Permalink Reply by Assistant Chief Billy Greenwood on April 28, 2011 at 2:42pm

Chief, you stated IC's. I understand the reasoning for using the Unified Command System, multi-jurisdictional responses, geographically in different towns, or possibly FD's operating on different frequencies, etc. I was just curious with regard to this being a FAA tri-annual disaster drill, in the Tweed ACM who is ultimately the AHJ.

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Permalink Reply by P.J. Norwood on April 28, 2011 at 2:51pm

Bill, I am not sure who is "officially" in charge by the FAA regulations. My level of involvment is strictly operational and I assist the airport managment with the planning. Additionally, I can tell you that the airport does have their Asst. Manager at the command post working together with the other organizations. We have a very close relationship with the airport managment and operations personell where at time it would appear we are al one department. This increases the smoothness of all involvment we have with the airport.

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Permalink Reply by Assistant Chief Billy Greenwood on April 28, 2011 at 2:55pm

Chief, you looked to have a really organized MCI and I fully understand that is a huge committment on your behalf as a planner for airport managment. I was just curious as I trained some of the Tweed guys and gals in the past, but I never knew the set-up they had down there.

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Permalink Reply by P.J. Norwood on April 28, 2011 at 3:07pm

No problem if you trained them you did a great job. Those guys are real good at what they do.

I just reciueved a link to some videos: . http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=AB56A5516C3BA7F0

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Permalink Reply by Assistant Chief Billy Greenwood on April 28, 2011 at 3:13pm

Well it was 10+ years ago. take a look at my website, www.fetcservices.com

There is a female in ARFF gear on the testimonials page that was from TWEED and trained with some Portland Brothers when I was teaching at ARFFWG Seminar.

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