Mayday: Small airports prepare for the big one

Most airline passengers flying cross-country enjoy a lazy view of rural America. From 37,000 feet, farmland is punctuated by towns and small airports where one or two takeoffs or landings an hour is the norm. The largest plane frequenting some of these airports may carry no more than a couple of dozen people.

On occasion, however, a big one falls out of the sky.

One such occasion was July 19, 1989, when a three-engine United Airlines DC-10 flying from Denver to Chicago with 296 people on board suffered an engine failure and lost all control systems.

Aerial view of a disaster exercise at Dane County (Wis.) Regional Airport, where more than 50 agencies participated , with local through federal participation.

Steering with only the plane's two remaining engines, the pilots first were directed toward Des Moines. Runways there were long enough to handle the big plane. The pilots were unable to fly that far and attempted an emergency landing at Sioux City, Iowa's, Sioux Gateway Airport. The plane exploded on landing, killing 112 and testing the small airport's disaster response plan.

The airplane's captain, who survived, cited luck as a major contributor to anyone's surviving the accident. The weather was good; the corn was high, cushioning the airplane somewhat when it skidded off the runway; the Iowa National Guard (which shares the airport) had hundreds of troops on hand for a training exercise; and emergency response crews had advance warning that a crash was about to occur.

Altogether, the greater Sioux City community responded with more than 30 fire and rescue units, more than two dozen law enforcement agencies, 14 military units, nine helicopters and 150 ems personnel.

Automatic response
One person absent that day was the airport's director, who was vacationing in Hawaii. Disaster management responsibility fell to Dave McWilliams, currently Sioux Gateway Airport's operations manager.

"You go on automatic," says McWilliams, recalling the emergency response. "You know what you're supposed to do and you do it."

That's due in large part to a Federal Aviation Administration requirement that all federally licensed airports conduct disaster-training exercises once every three years. Since the early 1970s, an airport emergency plan has been required as part of the faa's Airport Certification Manual for U.S. airports. In 1977, federal regulations were amended to require airport operators to coordinate their efforts most closely with local emergency service agencies. Sioux City had recently completed a training exercise when United Flight 232 crashed.

McWilliams says he may have been most effective that day when he stepped aside to let the responding agencies do their work. "I could have thrown a wrench in there. Micromanagement can be a problem" in disaster response, he says.

Instead, responders went to work as they had been trained. Law enforcement officers secured the airport perimeter, firefighters attacked the blaze and medical units set up triage stations to care for the injured and arrange for transport to area hospitals.

Communications among responders was a problem at Sioux City, as is typical among most airport disaster scenarios, says Mark Conroy. Now a senior engineer with the National Fire Protection Association, Conroy helped investigate the Sioux City accident for the National Transportation Safety Board. During the emergency, radio frequencies became overcrowded, and the few cell phones that were available proved troublesome. "It was a problem they never expected," Conroy says.

Although NFPA standards for aircraft rescue and firefighting address communication issues in detail, manuals go only so far in preparing emergency responders for a real disaster. "Until you actually go through training and look at the local level, you don't see the problems," Conroy says.

The Dane County (Wis.) Sheriff's Tactical Response Team participated in the exercise using their new tactical response vehicle.

Cross training
The Sioux City airport disaster occurred 16 years ago, but remains on the minds of many managers responsible for disaster planning at the nation's smaller airports.

Jeff Wadekamper, business development officer at the Helena, Mont., Regional Airport can step outside his office almost any time during his workday and see airplanes as large as jumbo jets flying overhead on transcontinental routes. If one were to crash at Helena, airport personnel would draw on cross-training skills to lend assistance. Everyone from senior airport administrators to custodians is trained as an emergency responder backed up by local professionals. "It's fairly typical for an airport our size," Wadekamper says. "There's always the possibility of a Sioux City, Iowa."

One disadvantage that smaller airports sometimes face is that they may be limited in the kind of incident response equipment they have on hand.

"I don't imagine a local municipal airport will buy a $2 million arff (airport rescue and fire fighting) vehicle in case a 747 drops in," says Conroy. Even if a small airport can't afford to buy pieces of equipment, however, disaster planners should at least review and rehearse their worst-case options.

Heightened security since Sept. 11 has had little affect on airport disaster planning, says Conroy. There's always been a need for emergency plans that detail how responders will get firefighting equipment to the scene, suppress the fire and get passengers and crew out as quickly as possible.

He says one major change came about in the early 1990s when Driver Enhanced Vision Systems began to be deployed, a crossover technology adopted from the military. The technology allows emergency vehicle drivers to rely on forward-looking infrared cameras to help navigate through fog, smoke and snow to reach a crash site.

Improvements also have been made to fire-suppressing agent delivery systems and to fire truck booms and turrets. And steps have been taken to make firefighting equipment less prone to rolling over, including lowering their center of gravity and enhancing driver training.

While the tactics of responding to an airport emergency have remained largely unchanged over the years, training scenarios at small airports have grown increasingly complex since Sept. 11. Exercises now may include wmd, terrorists and bombs.

Helena, Montana's, most recent disaster exercise occurred last June and piggybacked onto a wmd exercise put on by the state's department of disaster services. The scenario involved a report of smoke of an unknown nature in the cockpit, an emergency landing, crash and mass casualties. Airport disaster managers were keen on testing the incident command handoff from airport to local fire department control, says Wadekamper. One issue being addressed at the time of the exercise was a radio upgrade by the city and county to allow for secure communication among talk groups.

Communications complexities
Communications issues may be even more complex at Sarasota-Bradenton (Fla.) International Airport where, as at many airports nationally, the runways straddle two counties. That means a plane can crash in one county and come to rest in another, potentially doubling the number of responding agencies, but adding to communications complexities. In Sarasota-Bradenton's case, emergency services in one county use an 800mhz analog system, while those in the other county use digital. Currently, no interface exists between the two, says Mark Stuckey, manager of airport operations.

Firefighters tackle live fire training on an aircraft mockup at teh Rocky Mountain Emergency Services Training Center, Helena, Mont.

During a training exercise on June 22, the Sarasota-Bradenton airport focused on setting up incident command and joint command operations. Responding agencies from both counties used a command bus to link their communication systems. In an actual emergency, disaster agencies could have additional tactical frequencies at their disposal, Stuckey says. And if the disaster were large enough, mobile communications towers could also augment existing systems.

Besides the communications issues, Stuckey says that key lessons learned related to directing emergency vehicles to the proper gate to gain airport access, staging and releasing emergency vehicles both on and off the airport, and tracking victims who are transported to area hospitals. Law enforcement also practiced crowd control techniques as volunteers played the role of passengers trying to leave the terminal to lend assistance.

In early July, the Dane County Regional Airport in Madison, Wis., held a training exercise simulating a Sioux City–type incident combined with 9-11. In the scenario, a flight bound for Washington, D.C., developed engine trouble as terrorists seized control and sprayed passengers with sodium cyanide before committing suicide. Local hazmat teams were able to practice decontamination techniques as "victims" were hosed down on a grassy area near the runway.

Madison's exercise counted volunteer fire departments among the 53 local, county, state and federal agencies taking part. A key issue for volunteer departments is complying with National Incident Management System standards adopted by dhs for airport disasters, says John "J" McLellan, population protection planner with the Dane County Emergency Management Agency. Financially strapped volunteer fire departments may be hard-pressed to find the $50,000 or so required for a communications system capable of interfacing with incident command systems.

Training center
Typical emergencies covered by airport emergency plans include aircraft incidents or accidents, bomb threats or explosions, structural fires, radiological incidents, sabotage, hijackings, power failures and crowd control. Training occurs not only at individual airports, but also at specialized training centers funded by the faa and operated by local airports around the country.

One such training center is the Rocky Mountain Emergency Services Training Center in Helena, Mont., which opened in 1996 to provide specialized training and certification for Class A, B and C airports. Airports in these categories often face significant challenges due to limited staffing and cross-training requirements.

The $8 million center was built with money from the faa and includes a two-story, 13,000-square-foot classroom building that also accommodates a 1,500-gallon arff vehicle. A nearby control room operates a Boeing 737 mockup equipped with propane-fueled "fireplaces" to provide training in fighting engine, wheel, cockpit, baggage compartment, lavatory or interior fires. The facility offers new certification as well as recertification classes for responders primarily from the Pacific Northwest, although students from as far away as New York State have received training there.

Students learn everything from aircraft and airport familiarity to personal protective equipment, extinguishing agents, and fuels and their properties, says Wadekamper. Students also learn how to use truck-mounted firefighting equipment and techniques for creating rescue corridors. A basic 40-hour training course costs around $800, while recertification exercises cost $375–$650 a person, depending on the scenario's complexity.

One area where training may not be possible is in dealing with the after-effects of an airport disaster. Dave McWilliams in Sioux City says that everyone involved in the DC-10 crash was debriefed and offered counseling. Even so, the community endured some internal conflict. "Some people said, 'I did this,' instead of 'We did this,'" causing hurt feelings for a while, he says, though he adds that time has eased those sore spots.

Time is also erasing visual reminders of the Sioux City crash. Holes still mark the spot where the plane hit the runway, which was closed at the time and remains inactive today. But patches repairing the airport's active runway where the DC-10 skidded are fading with each passing year.

"I hope I never see another air crash," McWilliams says. "One's plenty."