Loader crashes fence and rams plane at airport yesterday?
By Kyra Hoggan
Anyone wondering what all the fuss was about at the West Kootenay Regional Airport yesterday morning will be relieved to know it was only an emergency preparedness exercise involving 24 personnel from airport staff, the fire department, RCMP, Transport Canada, the pre-board screening security company and the Corps of Commissionaires.
Airport manager Gerry Rempel said this full-scale exercise incorporated both a security breach and an aircraft incident.
“The scenario was about a distraught husband who learned that his wife and child were leaving on a plane,” Rempel said. “So he stole heavy-equipment loader and smashed through the security fence and onto the tarmac, where the loader crashed into the aircraft as it was taxiing onto the runway.”
The role of distraught husband was played by an airport maintenance wmployee – someone Rempel said was a very good sport about being cast in the bad-guy role.
“But he ran the loader through an open gate rather than actually smashing through the fence,” Rempel added.
The RCMP simulated having a K-9 van on hand, while five others played the roles of aircraft crew and passengers (it was a small twin-engine plane), and the beleagured maintenance worker was, in the end, captured and treated for faux dog bites.
While this all may seem like fun and games, Rempel says real-life run-throughs are critical to building proficiency and detecting (and thus correcting) any weaknesses or omissions in current protocols.
“We do a full-scale exercise once every five years, and a table-top version once a year,” he said. “The general consensus with all the emergency services is that we would like to do more of these. We react how we were trained – these exercises evaluate that training and ensure unhesitating responses to unexpected events.”
Simple things like communications (all the radios, etc are in good working order), who reports to who, who contacts who, what’s the interagency chain of command – even, dare we say it, who deals with the media – all of these have to be distinct and well-rehearsed in advance of a crisis situation.
The simulation exercise ran from about 10:55 a.m. to about 12 p.m. Wednesday morning.
There were no real injuries or property damage.
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