Since the Wright Brothers started with flying aircraft there have been many times when those aircraft have come down not where the pilot intended and crashed.
In recent years we have seen how some people will use aircraft as a weapon and intentionally crash them into buildings like 9/11.
There are many fire departments that do not have an airport in their jurisdiction but could still suffer from the horrible effects of having an aircraft land in their backyard.
There are so many factors that play into the outcome of a crash, were the pilots physically in control of the plane, were there failures that caused the plane not to be able to land at the airport like the USAir flight that landed in the Hudson River in New York.
According to airplane crash statics 22% of the plane crashes occur on take-off and 51% occur on approach and landing.
You need to have plans in place with those communities around the airport that fall under the flight paths to the airport.
If draw two circles around your airport and figure out what a 3 minute from take-off circle would be and the other would be 8 minutes to landing would be and those are the 2 major time/distance areas that your planning should be designed around.
What if within those circles you have a large water hazard like many of the coastal airport that a plane could possibly land or crash into, what additional planning and resources will you need to factor into the emergency plans.
What resources do you have available for your water side exposure, what is available with your mutual aid partners and other agencies and have you developed one of your drills to test these components of your plan.
Many fire chiefs would argue that they do not need to have training for an event that may or may not happen, well can be said be said about a lot of fires we face in the fire service.
Just a few years ago we were not training for electric car and battery power scooters burn but today it is a reality of our times.
Creative training officers can find way to dove tail their Aircraft Rescue Fire Fighting (ARFF) in with other relative events like a gasoline tanker and mass casualty responses.
If you look as a very large bus with tanker trucks for wings, then you do have the training and equipment you need to start your attack on a crash.
This a tabletop drill that you can run in conjunction with your local EMS and hospital agencies.
Depending on the size of the aircraft a where and what it lands on will determine the number of causalities you may have.
While on duty at the fire station, as the shift command in October 2001, I responded to a fire at power plant about a mile away.
While in route I got a radio report from my dispatcher stating that they got a call for a report of a plane had just crashed into the power plant.
I was now faced with a rapidly growing situation and my training kicked in and I went through my mental check list of “ENOUGH”.
I start asking do I have enough resources on the initial response, do I have enough information and do I have enough manpower.
I radioed my dispatched to check with Logan Airport to see if they were missing and aircraft and if so what type and how large.
From a distance I had a heavy fire showing and ordered a second alarm to start to address some of my enough questions.
I also requested additional EMS units with a staging area.
My 360 assessment of the scene showed no signs of anything related to an plane crash and the airport reported nothing missing; it was soon to be determined that the incident was an explosion of a temporary transformer with 10,000 gallons of mineral oil that had exploded and was now burning.
Being about one month after 9/11 everyone was on edge and thinking the worst but like the incident commanders that responded to World Trade Center and the Pentagon we were now faced with being the incident commanders that must handle a situation and being mindful of the safety of our firefighters.
The hazards of any plane crash are numerous, possibly large amounts of fuel, possible mass causality incident from people on the plane and one the ground, hazardous cargo, explosives if it’s a military plan, exotic metals and fibers used to make the plane that produce smoke that should not be breathed in.
Some aircraft today have the ability to hold 800 souls on board during a flight and in a crash will result in an incident that would overwhelm any EMS system, if there are survivors and overwhelm the regional medical examiner office if there are fatalities.
There are a number of mutual aid agreements in place for fire, police and EMS operations to respond to these incidents and the medical examiners office also has the ability to request assistance from Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Teams (DMORT).
Once the incident has moved past the rescue phase and into the recovery phase then personnel entering the HOT zone should be wearing the proper personal protection equipment for being exposed to biohazards.
The incident commander needs to establish a good security zone around the incident.
Local and state police should work together to provide protection for what can be an extended period of time.
There will also be an alphabet soup of agencies that will be responding to the incident and will be requesting access to the scene.
It is the incident commander and the command staff’s responsibility to ensure their safety while in the hot zone; multiple federal and state agencies will be invited.
The Incident commander should also request mutual aid assistance from the closest airport for both firefighting and technical expertise.
If there are survivors from the crash then additional security will be needed to escort them to a safe area, away from the media, until the airlines can assist with reunification effects to get them to their families or to their final location.
The airlines are required to have a program in place to handle family member and crash survivors and they usually will have a designated hotel where this should happen.
The American Red Cross is also involved with this program and they have the ability to bring in mental health counselors to talk with everyone involved.
The Incident commander will also have to assign someone to establish a place and time for an incident debriefing and peer counselling for the members involved, the sights and smells that they were exposed to will live with them forever.
The clean-up and investigation phase of the incident can last for a number of days or weeks.
Smaller departments will have a hard time maintaining operational readiness unless they start to rotate officers and crews out for food and rest.
Many departments will establish 12-hour operational periods with the development of Incident Action Plans (IAP’s) for what will be worked on in the next 12-hour period.
According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) they have an advisory circular that provides important information for first responders that discusses their responsibility regarding evidence protection at the scene of an aircraft incident and one comment in this document states, “The cause of an aircraft accident has often been determined from a detailed analysis of the wreckage including the actual location of the wreckage and where the remains from the wreckage fell.
Therefore, it is essential that wreckage be protected during rescue operations.
This is not to imply that during fire fighter operations wreckage may not be disturbed; it should be kept to a minimum.”
The scene should be photographed as much as possible, no piece of equipment or switches should be touched or changed unless it is advised to because of a safety issue and that needs to be documented.
The fire department should not take it on its own to attempt to retrieve the black boxes, wait until the proper investigative teams arrives on scene and they can assist them to ensure the units are not damaged.
For some communities an aircraft crash will change the community forever.
Survivors and family members will want to return to the scene to remember the events of that day and how it effected their lives.
The fire service wants to remember the event as the day that we showed up, prepared, well trained and did everything within our power to save as many lives as possible.
If you have any questions please reach out to me at: dchiefpaul@aol.com
