The Big Drill

Once every three years, all 400 and some commercial service airports in the U.S. are required by FAA regulations to conduct a triennial exercise. The exercise must be a mass casualty (15 or more injured) drill that simulates an aircraft accident indicative of the type of airliners that fly into the airport. For instance, you wouldn't simulate a Boeing 747 crash at my hometown airport of Williamsport because they don't see 747s on a regular basis. You would, however, want to simulate a Boeing 747 at someplace like JFK International Airport.

And once every three years, I step up to the plate and do my best to shine. At our airport, I am the one responsible for making sure this exercise happens. Airport emergency planning for FAA requirements is my responsibility. Yesterday was our day and my day at the plate. I am particularly proud of this year's drill, mainly because I created the scenario. So pardon me for bragging just a bit, but I wrote and developed it and got everybody on board with it! A drill that would include a live fire burn for the airport firefighters to put out. A real treat for the eyes and a valuable training tool for the fire guys.

All bragging aside, this exercise was a year in the making and included many many individuals in the planning process. It was also the county wide mass casualty exercise and even though I created the scenario, it would not be possible for one person alone to make it all come together.

The scenario for this exercise was an airliner crash and burn just short of the runway while trying to land in a thunderstorm. Our mock victims were 120 local high school students who were placed on a hangar ramp. As with any mass casualty, victims were to be triaged ( a process to classify the injured). First responders will triage victims based on their immediate condition and place a green, yellow, red or black triage tag on them. Green tags are those who can walk - walking wounded while black tags are.....well....I'll let you figure that one out! For the drill our airport triage trailer was brought to the scene, the incident command center was set up and everyone acted out their roles as if it where real. Evaluators were brought in to observe and critique the response. By all accounts so far, the drill was success with very positive feedback coming in.

Considering 800 students were bussed around the county to just about every hospital and then all brought safely back to school, it was an amazing effort. Aside from the airport action, the local hospitals played along by receiving "victims" to simulate the rush of casualties from a major disaster.

I'll be posting pictures from the drill in a few days, so be on the lookout. Also coming soon on this blog will be updates from garden expansion # 502!