Archive: Around Town

At 9:36am Saturday Tompkins County officials were notified that American Airline flight #4250 crashed on arrival at the Ithaca Tompkins County Regional Airport around 9am.  Emergency crews from the airport fire department were joined by firefighters and EMTs from surrounding fire departments that rushed to the scene to put out fires and rescue survivors.  The alert noted the airport was closed, and motorists should avoid the area.

The airport, in fact, was not closed, and flights continued to land as emergency crews worked -- the disaster was an FAA-mandated drill that involved about 200 dispatchers, first responders, airport personnel, evaluators and volunteers playing the roles of crash victims.

"Air transportation is far safer than driving a car," says Airport Manager Mike Hall.  "We don't like to be reminded -- it's bad enough on the evening news every day -- that bad things happen to good people in the pursuit of their activities.  The flip side is we would be derelict if we didn't prepare for the fact that every now and then it does happen.  And when it does, whether it's a car wreck on 13 and Brown or an airplane on the air field, we can help people survive and put their lives back together."


Tompkins County Department of Emergency Response dispatchers handled the calls.  Eight fire departments responded to the mock crash, including Lansing Fire Department, Ithaca Tompkins Regional Airport, Fire Department, Neptune Hose Co #1 of Dryden Inc., Groton Fire Dept, Ithaca Fire Department, Cayuga Heights Fire Department, Varna Volunteer Fire Co., Etna Fire Department.  Tompkins County Sheriff's Office, Ithaca Police Department, and the New York State Police responded, as did Bangs Ambulance, Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit (TCAT), New York State Division of Homeland Security & Emergency Services. 


The airport's own fire department was first on the scene, dispatching equipment from the fire station in the administrative section of the airport, southeast of the commercial passenger terminal.  Mutual Aid departments arrived close behind, setting up quickly to help put out the fire at the crashed fuselage simulator, made of enormous fuel drums permanently located on the air field. 


Despite the name 'Ithaca Tompkins', the airport is actually in Lansing.  In emergencies that means the Lansing Fire Department is the first mutual aid department called to assist the airport firefighters.  That will be it for first alarm calls that involve up to seven passengers.  When 50 passengers are involved a fourth alarm calls all the local mutual aid departments.  Saturday's drill was a fourth alarm exercise.

"We're given broad parameters by the FAA," Hall says.  You're supposed to size it for commercial traffic and the most challenging situation you could face.  For us it's a 50-seat airplane.  It's going to be on the airport, so you're probably looking at a takeoff of landing accident, and a kind of accident where there may be survivors."


The site was tightly controlled as it would be in a real emergency.  The addition you would not see at a real emergency was a cadre of evaluators and observers.  Observers were local professionals who would bring their experience to bear at their hobs, working for the airport or private Fixed base Operators such as Taughannock Aviation.  Evaluators included professionals from all over the state who specialize in firefighting, emergency medical care, emergency dispatchers, and so on.

"We have the fire chief from the Buffalo airport here," Hall says.  "He organized a group of people who look specificly at the aircraft and firefighting and what have you.  We have evaluators in the 911 building.  We had a good group of evaluators.  They were all professionals, officials in the field."

Responders began rescuing victims from the 'plane', bringing them to a triage area that had been set up well away from the fire.


The triage area was delineated by three large tarpaulins, green, yellow and red.  Victims with minor injuries were directed to the green tarp -- passengers on the red tarp were carried on stretchers.  The victims included nearly 50 volunteers who had arrived early in the morning for a makeup session in which blood and grisly wounds were applied.




Of course if the event had really happened the airport would have been closed.  If debris was near the runway it would have stayed closed until the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) arrived, assessed the scene, documented everything, and cleaned it up.  Then we'd open again.

Every aspect of the drill, from the initial 911 call to the disaster response to dissemination of public information.  Tompkins County Public Information Officer Marcia Lynch sent press releases, clearly marked "*This is a DRILL*", but otherwise detailed.

"At 9:36AM on October 14, 2017, Tompkins County officials were notified that an accident has occurred at the Tompkins County Regional Airport.  American Airlines flight #4250 crashed on arrival to the Tompkins County Regional Airport at approximately 9:00AM.  Emergency crews are responding from surrounding areas to assist and the airport crash-fire rescue team is on site. Public and motorists are advised to avoid the area. The airport is closed until further notice.  Information will be released as soon as it is available." she wrote.
 
Despite that and flashing signs along Warren Road warning motorists that a disaster drill was in progress, not everyone caught the part that said "This is a Drill".

"We did a good job of trying to produce very realistic releases based on the information we were using in the exercise," Hall says.  "I got a call on my cell phone from the press in Binghamton at 5pm, wondering about the crash at Ithaca."


All the responders participated in a post-mortem session to evaluate the exercise.  Lessons learned in the exercise will be applied if a real disaster befalls Tompkins County.  In the debriefing session afterwards an evaluator noted that a fire truck was not in position to cover firefighters working near the plane.  If the plane had exploded the truck should be placed where it could protect them spray foam on them.  Another observation was that multiple agencies using multiple radio frequencies made coordination more confusing than it may have been with a more integrated frequency plan.

Airport officials send a report on the exercise to the FAA, but the exercise is internally conducted and graded.  A post-mortem session is held to identify strengths and weaknesses that can be improved upon.  Hall says the emergency departments did very well Saturday.  Evaluators identified a few areas for improvement, such as better placement of a fire truck to protect firefighters with foam in case the plane exploded.

In November the FAA will conduct a Part 139 inspections, as well, in which they look at all aspects of airport operation.  Another fire exercise is part of that inspection, but it only involves the airport fire department, measuring response time and other aspects of emergency response.

Airport fire department members perform other duties around the airport when they are not training or responding to actual emergencies.  In an emergency they have to return to the fire station, get their gear, and speed to the scene within prescribed time periods.

"Since (Airport Fire Cheif) Josh Nalley took over, with my explicit approval and encouragement, we are responding to calls at the business park, and areas immediately off the airport," says Hall. "We a ten minute requirement.  We can't go far or get tied up.  But if someone is having a heart attack in the business park it would be a tragedy if they had to wait when we can be there in a minute.  So the mutual aid is truly mutual.  That's a big change for the airport.  It's good for our folks because they can not only do good for the community, but it's good to be exercised as well."

Hall says Saturday's exercise was the largest disaster exercise he recalls ever happening in the County.  He adds that there were no serious errors, and the exercise flowed very well. 

"This could just as well have been the truck at Simeon's," Hall observes.  "If that truck had hit a half an hour later that would have been a mass casualty situation.   It could be a shooting, which, fortunately, we haven't seen. Look at the evening news and you realize society is vulnerable to mass casualty events.  This was a very good exercise in a county where we are very fortunate that we haven't had that sort of situation, and, hopefully will not have it.  But if it does happen -- a bad bus crash, for example, or an air crash -- we will be better prepared as a result of this exercise."


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