Soon to be parked in one of six bays at the T.F. Green Airport Fire Department: a 24-foot mass casualty trailer. It will be stocked with large quantities of medical supplies, such as burn blankets and backboards, that just can’t be stowed on the department’s trucks. It is hoped that the fire department will never have to use the trailer.
But once the trailer does arrive, sometime in the next few weeks, according to Chief Paul Healy, the department will be even more prepared to deal with a serious aircraft accident at the airport in Warwick. Healy is also expecting a 1,000-gallon foam trailer that will allow firefighters to more easily refill three fire trucks. The foam is used to extinguish fuel fires and would otherwise sit in plastic drums in a bay at the Cedar Swamp Road station.
Passengers searching for their departure gate and people waiting at baggage claim to pick up friends and family may not realize the day-to-day work that is put into keeping the airport safe and being prepared to deal with a variety of emergencies. Everyone from the maintenance staff and administrators to airport police officers and firefighters has a role to play.
The airport firefighters alone are required to do daily training, from terrorism threats and fuel fires to OSHA rules and first aid. All of this must be documented for the Federal Aviation Administration.
Mark Brewer is the deputy executive director for the Rhode Island Airport Corp., which oversees operations at T.F. Green.
“Any airport is required by the FAA to have an airport emergency plan. It has to address how the airport will respond to various emergencies from natural disasters to aircraft incidents to VIP arrivals to bomb threats,” Brewer said.
The FAA also requires airport officials to “exercise” their safety plans once a year, either through a “tabletop” discussion or a full-scale drill, he said. A full-scale drill must be undertaken every three years. Officials at T.F. Green conducted a full-scale drill in 1998, staging a cargo plane accident with a Federal Express plane.
“Firefighters had to go on board to effect a rescue of people trapped on board,” he said. Other airport personnel had to account for injured “patients” and get assessments of their medical conditions once they were taken to the hospital.
Maintenance staffers were also put through their paces, according to Brewer. During a real emergency they might be responsible for clearing an escape route for passengers once they are rescued, or may have to secure an incident site for the National Transportation Safety Board.
“If any of our firefighting crews need additional supplies, additional medical supplies, additional foam we may dispatch a maintenance crew,” Brewer said. “If any one of these emergencies occurs, it’s all hands on deck.”
This year’s safety plan exercise was a tabletop discussion. Representatives from about 70 agencies including Warwick’s police and fire departments, the American Red Cross, state police, and local hospitals gathered for that session, according to Brewer.
The airport’s police department is staffed with 20 officers, who carry guns and have arrest powers, and its fire department has 18 firefighters. Both departments operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Communication between the organizations participating in the drill is closely reviewed. “It becomes essential for a good command structure to come up, you can’t have individual agencies working against each other unknowingly – it has to be a coordinated effort,” Brewer said.
In the latest exercise, for example, he said a critique revealed that at least four groups – the airport, the airline, the Rhode Island State Police and the Warwick Fire Department – planned to notify area hospitals of a possible emergency. “The hospitals are saying we only need to be told once; we’ll get ourselves geared up, don’t swamp our phone lines,” Brewer explained.
