A simulated disaster at Little Rock’s Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport on Tuesday tested the effectiveness of emergency responders and administrators.
The scenario: a flock of ducks are sucked into an engine during takeoff, and the plane is forced to make an emergency landing – except, the landing gear doesn’t deploy, leading to a crash.
The airport’s public information officer Shane Carter says the simulation tests the coordination of multiple agencies.
“You have law officers here, you have members of the fire department, you have students that are here observing today, you have [Metropolitan Emergency Medical Services] and so many others have come together to make sure that in the event of a real emergency, we’re going to be ready.”
Carter says, though the test is a routine every three years, the emergency scenario is always different.
In addition to these drills, he says the airport also goes under a thorough investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration each year. A recent inspection in Little Rock by the FAA found no discrepancies in airport safety.
“The inspector that was assigned to this airport said that out the past 100 inspections that he's done, there have only been five airports with zero discrepancies, and this was one of them.”
Carter said coordinating the multiple departments is the highest priority.
"It's very important to looking at our mutual aid volunteers. While the airport has its overall emergency plan, each of these entities has a plan themself, so the coordination is extremely important.”
A full-scale drill means the exercise was carried out on a runway, and included a fiery downed fuselage, volunteer victims, and a designated area for crews to search for debris. Carter says the faux-emergency is even carried out in stages for added realism.
"Some of these situations were known at the very beginning as the call came out. Others were added throughout, because in a real emergency, it's a very fluid situation, and we have to make sure that everyone's that's here is ready for any kind of emergency that can happen.”
The most recent commercial airline crash at the Clinton National Airport was in 1999, when an American Airlines flight overran the runway during a thunderstorm.
