Emergency crews participate in airport drill

ERIC LINDBERG
DAILY SOUND STAFF WRITER

Clouds of brownish-gray smoke swirl around the side of a jet on the tarmac at Santa Barbara Municipal Airport as some passengers stumble out of the wreckage, the cries of others trapped inside cutting through the morning air.
It’s a scene local emergency responders hope they never have to face, but know they will be ready for after taking part in a mass-scale drill simulating a regional jet crashing upon takeoff yesterday.

The scenario called for a 50-passenger jet with four crew members to skid across the runway after a sudden explosion, its landing gear crushed, one wing ablaze and fuel spilling across the tarmac.
“An airway regional jet crashed on runway,” a staged dispatcher relays over emergency radios. “We have a major jet crash. We have major fire and smoke.”
Within moments, two airport emergency trucks arrive on the scene, circling the “jet” — a MTD bus in this case — front-mounted water guns briefly spraying the ground as a test. As airport security vehicles pull up, an emergency responder begins issuing instructions through a loudspeaker.
“All passengers that can walk on their own, walk toward the flashing lights.”
Out of the smoke, people begin to emerge, some holding their stomachs, one woman hysterically screaming.
“We do as we normally would in a real emergency,” said Mitch Vaughn, Santa Barbara City deputy fire chief. “This is what you would see in a real incident.”
Three to five minutes into the drill, fire engines from stations throughout the South Coast start arriving, firefighters pouring out, unrolling hoses, roaming around the wreckage and starting to assess patients.
Medics start to set up a triage area, a red mat for those with immediate need and a yellow mat for those with less serious injuries. Some passengers are tagged with green markers, identified as the “walking wounded.” Others get a black tag, those deceased or beyond hope.
“Certain people are going to be black-tagged and left there,” City Fire Capt. Gary Pitney said. “It’s an unfortunate reality in a multi-casualty incident.”
As the distraught woman, who had wandered over to an emergency vehicle, begins to sprint back toward the plane yelling that her friend is dead, a police officer steps in to hold her back.
Evaluators circle the scene, taking notes for the after-incident debrief as firefighters and medics continue to administer aid and load victims into arriving ambulances.
Capt. Pitney explained that many of the emergency resources that would normally respond were scaled down for the exercise, to prevent any impact on actual emergencies in the area. He said the airport, still in operation as evidenced by jets continuing to take off and land in the background, would be completely shut down and air traffic rerouted in a true emergency.
With the 90 daily regional flights at the airport, fire officials said although there have been no large-scale incidents, there is always that possibility.
“It’s always important to practice your skills,” Deputy Chief Vaughn said. “We’d rather practice than do it for real.”
The Federal Aviation Administration requires an extensive training exercise every three years. More than 20 individual agencies participated in yesterday’s drill, including Santa Barbara fire and police; County fire, Sheriff’s and coroner; ambulance companies, airlines, California Highway Patrol and the FBI.
“This is just a great chance for our guys to not only test out their equipment and resources, but to coordinate with other departments and agencies,” City Fire Chief Ron Prince said.
As the drill continued, volunteers from the local chapter of the Red Cross offered mental and spiritual health services to family members and friends.
“The Red Cross helps out in disasters, so of course we’ll prepare for disasters,” Marjorie Wass, a Red Cross spokeswoman, said.
Following the emergency exercise, participants gathered for a detailed debriefing and analysis. Chris Blair, a city fire battalion chief, said they did experience some communication issues, but as a whole, the drill went smoothly.
“It went extremely well,” Blair said, adding that he had participated in a similar exercise in 2004.
“A lot of the glitches we had found on the fire response side and the unified command were worked out,” he said. “…We eliminated 90 percent of the issues we had three years ago.”