NORFOLK, Va. — Norfolk International Airport brought together more than 200 people Saturday morning for a federally mandated disaster exercise simulating a catastrophic aircraft incident.
"We do it every three years,” said Bruce Evans, Senior Manager of Public Safety and Security at the airport. It’s really just a good opportunity for us to exercise for a catastrophic aircraft incident. Brings together all of our mutual aid partners, and we get a chance to exercise together and work on that interoperability.”
The training started with firefighters putting out the flames of a mock plane. Then they moved to treating patients played by more than a hundred volunteers. Evans said those role players help make the exercise as realistic as possible.
The drill is required by the Federal Aviation Administration every three years and focuses on testing critical response skills.
“Interoperability is huge. We don’t get to interact with our mutual aid partners on such a large scale. So an incident like this tests that it challenges us. Communication is always a big problem at an incident like this," Evans said. "So we have a chance to communicate across multiple jurisdictions. So we have the airport, we have the City of Norfolk, and the City of Virginia Beach. We get to exercise that interoperability at a large scale event in playtime, so that we’ll be better prepared in real time."
About 120 volunteers posed as victims in the scenario, while around 100 responders took part. The exercise included participation from Norfolk Fire-Rescue, Virginia Beach Fire Department, Virginia Beach EMS, Chesapeake responders, airport personnel and numerous volunteers.
"Depending on severity, we could send patients as far as Richmond, Charlottesville, and that interoperability is so important that we test it, that we find out, we learn what we don’t know, and it’s drills like this will show that to us, and we can get better,” Evans said.
He added that it is especially important for local agencies to train in an airport environment.
"They are not used to working in an airport environment. They are used to working in a municipality, but coming onto an airfield dealing with the fire that comes from an aircraft, the severity of injuries in an incident like this, you’re going to have very critically wounded, mortally wounded people, and you’re just not going to see that type of stuff at a municipality from a car accident or a house fire, or something like that," he said. "It’s important that we get them on our property, because, depending on the incident, our airport may still be open, where they move, how they move, all critical for them to learn.”
Evans said volunteers were recruited from multiple sources.
