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[ Publications ]
Major
Aviation Disasters- Gunnar
J. Kuepper
No.24 The delayed emergency response hampered the timely evacuation of injured persons, and at least one passenger who survived the initial impact and fire might not have died if emergency medical responders had reached the accident site sooner. No.25 Improved formal coordination among...'s emergency response agencies has not been implemented, and off-airport drills to identify and correct deficiencies in disaster response planning before an accident occurs have still not been conducted in the more than 2 years since the flight.... accident. No.26 Actions taken by...'s emergency response agencies after the accident have been inadequate because they failed to ensure that emergency notifications and responses would be timely and coordinated. Findings of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) after the crash of a Boeing 747 on U.S. soil in August 1997 in which 228 people perished and 26 survived. INTRODUCTION Since the first powered airplane flight by the Wright brothers in 1903, the aviation industry has grown tremendously. Today the aviation sector employs 127 million people and accounts annually for $3.5 trillion worldwide. With the growth of air traffic with thousands of commercial jets and millions of passengers every year, however, the risk of calamities has also increased. PROGRAM OBJECTIVES The objectives in managing an airplane crash, a passenger terminal fire, etc. are the same as in any other disaster situation. 1.
Saving lives Location
of accidents It
can happen in densely populated areas.
It
can happen in smaller cities, and in rural areas
It can happen in mountainous terrain.
During the landing approach or take-off phase, planes can crash into rivers, lakes, and shallow ocean waters
Some
planes plunge from as high as 30,000 feet into the sea.
On the very same Sunday as the Alaska Airlines crash, a Kenya Airways Airbus A-310 plunged into the Atlantic off Ivory Coast, Africa. Ten people were rescued from the cold ocean water, but 169 died. Types
of incidents The most serious of all is the high-impact crash. Examples are mid-air collisions or explosions in mid-air. There are almost never survivors. But even here, extensive search operations are always worth the effort. In September, 1997, Vietnam Airlines Tu-134 crashed at Cambodia's Phnom Penh Airport. Every one of the 66 people aboard were killed, but a 1-year-old child survived with only minor injuries. To find even one survivor would give the dreadful task of searching through dead, burnt and mutilated bodies meaning. In a middle-impact crash, such as a ground collision, skidding off the runway, running out of fuel, etc., we usually find some fatalities, many injured, and some uninjured survivors.
On January 30, 1974, a Pan-American Boeing 707 en route from Auckland, New Zealand, to Los Angeles, CA, made a scheduled stop at Pago-Pago International Airport. Due to stormy weather and human errors, the plane crashed in the jungle at 11:40 p.m., less than 900 yards short of the runway. All 101 people aboard survived the impact without serious injuries. But in the subsequent fire and smoke conditions, 97(!) people died and only four severely injured persons were rescued. On November 19, 1996, at 5:00 p.m. a United Express commuter plane collided with a King Air Beechcraft at Quincy Municipal Airport, Illinois. All passengers survived the initial accident, but the occupants were not able to evacuate. When the local fire department showed up 14 minutes later after a 10-mile approach, all 14 persons aboard both planes had perished. The airport had no Aircraft Rescue & Fire Fighting (ARFF) services and was not required to do so. Nevertheless, the NTSB stated that "contributing to the ... loss of life were the lack of adequate aircraft rescue and fire fighting services...." AIRPORT INDEXES AND ARFF REQUIREMENTS The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) is the worldwide regulatory body for airports and airport emergency services. In the U.S. the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) establishes the rules for airports. In 14 CFR § 139 defines the airports and mandatory levels of fire protection. U.S. Airports are classified from Index A (the smallest) to Index E (the largest), which equals very much the international ICAO classification from 1 (the smallest) to 9 (the largest).
The FAA mandates that the first ARFF vehicle must be able to arrive in 3 minutes or less at the midpoint of the farthest runway and that all other required apparatus must be arrive in 4 minutes or less. Much stronger directions are give by NFPA (National Fire Protection Association) Standard 403, the ICAO recommendation 9.2.19 - 20, and DODI (Department of Defense Instruction) DODI 6055.6. These regulations mandate within their jurisdictions that the first airport fire apparatus has to arrive at any point on the operational runways in less than 2 minutes and that all other required apparatus have to be at any point on the operational runways in 3 minutes or less. ICAO, DOD, and NFPA standards have also higher requirements in regards to extinguishing agents, staffing levels, etc. Interestingly, the obvious need for adequate EMS (emergency medical services) is not covered by FAA or any other US regulation. It is because of this that the new Denver International Airport (DIA) is justified only one Paramedic on airport premises for more than 104,000 passengers and 1,300 commercial flights daily. The response time for the closest ambulance will be 15 to 20 minutes in good weather conditions. AIRPORT EMERGENCY RESPONSE The benefit of having proper and trained ARFF units on-site in less than two minutes became even obvious in an earlier accident at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). On March 1, 1978, a Continental Airlines DC-10 crashed during take-off due to blown tires and the subsequent collapse of the landing gear. The plane carried 198 people and 81,000 gallons of Jet-A fuel. At least 10,000 gallons of kerosene spilled and ignited instantly, engulfing the fuselage in flames and toxic smoke. Approaching airport fire units encountered people outside the plane on fire and many still trapped inside the burning jet. The first ARFF crash truck was on-scene and in foam operation within 90 seconds of the initial alarm. Total extinguishment of the massive fire was accomplished only six (!) minutes after the crash. In the end, three people had perished, but 195 others survived, 43 with injuries. Inside the fence lies the principal jurisdiction of the airport and its fire and rescue services (ARFF), required by Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations. They should be expected to be trained, prepared, staffed and equipped to deal properly with an accident situation during the very first minutes. But even a recent study of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) proved otherwise. Fifty-four percent of category 9 airports (which are the larger airports like Chicago O'Hare, Los Angeles International, New York JFK, Dallas/Fort Worth, etc.) did not meet NFPA standards in regards to response time (fire vehicles arriving in two minutes or less to any point of the operational runway). However, the success or failure of ARFF in a major crash depends on qualified assistance from outside resources. Support is needed from local fire, EMS, and other emergency departments for water supply, providing personnel and equipment for rescue operations, triaging, treating and transporting injured victims to appropriate hospitals, accounting for and securing survivors and human remains, scene and access control, etc. Responding emergency departments need to understand the characteristics and their rules and responsibilities in an airplane crash. In the initial response and chaos phase the goals are:
through a single contact and control procedure called Incident Command System (ICS). On August 31, 1988, a Boeing 727 crashed at Dallas International Airport, very near the perimeter fencing. Responding airport fire and rescue crews set up a triage sector at the accident site. Local EMS units from neighboring counties and other jurisdictions approached the scene from outside the airfield. The Incident Commander, who was the ARFF chief, was not informed when a second triage area was set up. This "freelancing" created a serious breach of proper response activities, and in the accounting and identification of victims. Further, it endangered the safety of rescue personnel, who were searching for passengers already evacuated. Assisting departments should only fulfill assigned tasks and not work on their own. "Freelancing" will create chaos and confusion, and is always counter-productive. It is also dangerous for unassigned crews rushing to the accident scene without proper protective equipment. An aircraft accident scene is like a Haz-Mat area.It is absolutely necessary that responders have adequate training and equipment. Individual EMS and law enforcement agencies are often not familiar with the ICS concept. It is a common scenario, even during airport exercises, that ambulance crews rush to the scene without protective equipment, load victims on stretchers, and rush them to a hospital. Sometimes local responders are not even aware of the tremendous size of ARFF apparatus. Police units hindered access for ARFF vehicles desperately needed on-site, when a DC-8 cargo plane crashed on August 7, 1997 just outside the Miami International Airport on 72nd Avenue. The blockades set by patrol cars allowed access for conventional fire trucks but were not wide enough for the airport crash units. Availability
of neighboring emergency services Due to environmental and noise protection concerns, new airports are often built far away from urban areas (i.e., Osaka-Japan, Denver-USA, Munich-Germany). These airports have become self-contained and self-sufficient entities located on artificial islands or in the middle of what was once farmland. Consequently, the response times for outside emergency resources has grown to at least 30 to 40 minutes in good weather conditions. As a result, the airport's fire, rescue, and EMS departments are on their own for that period of time and, therefore, must develop the capability to handle any situation ranging from a failure of power and communication systems, to a mass-casualty incident involving a fiery collision of two major passenger jets, to an act of terrorism. In reviewing response operations to aviation accidents on and off airports the following problems are encountered again and again:
LOCAL/COMMUNITY EMERGENCY RESPONSE ARFF services are required and should be expected to deal with the specifics of a downed aircraft (i.e., fuel fire, fuselage, evacuation routes, and specific hazards). Emergency management agencies, fire, rescue, EMS, and law enforcement departments of local communities often have neither the experience nor the knowledge needed. If an airplane with 300 passengers crashes in a community, local emergency services are the first to respond. They might not have the training or resources to successfully fight 50,000 gallons of burning fuel whose flames reach up to a 100 feet and they are presented with an unfamiliar and overwhelming situation. An outside fuel fire goes through the metal skin of a passenger jet in approximately 90 seconds. Because responders will only have minutes or seconds to react, it is vital that they become thoroughly trained and well prepared. The first on-scene priority is fire control at the fuselage to ensure an escape route for the people aboard. It is, therefore, essential for local fire and rescue departments to know:
ACCESS Staging
and traffic direction It is crucial to organize staging area(s) as soon as possible. These should be at designated locations or at well-known places of adequate size (i.e., major highway intersection, ARFF station, parking lot). The staging area must be easily accessible and provide direct approach to the accident site. On airport premises or in off-road conditions, the use of escort vehicles is a prerequisite.
Accident Site Access to the downed aircraft is often just the beginning of many obstacles. As described above, airplanes have ended up in the ocean, on the roofs of homes, in rivers and lakes, in swamps, jungles, icy water, in mountainous and other inaccessible terrain. Fuselage Entry into the cabin is the next challenge. Conventional rescue tools like sledgehammers, etc., are often not successful. The aircraft's aluminum skin and pressurized windows are nearly unbreakable. In a recent test executed by the ARFF department at Louisville Airport, rescue crews tried to cut or break the windshield of a Boeing 747. Nine different tools were used. Working with most of the equipment proved to be very time-consuming, and partially or totally unsuccessful - even in the case of a window cutter and saws produced by high tech rescue manufacturers. The only tool found to be effective was the Partner K-1200 8.0-horsepower saw with a 32-tooth carbide tip blade, 14 inches in diameter. However, the heavy-weight, 92 pound, device threw sparks and glass particles in all directions. Fast entry is a crucial factor in life-saving operations. Many people will survive the initial impact of the crash, but within a very short time they can and will be overcome by heat and poisoning smoke. If the people aboard are not able to evacuate or are not rescued within the first three minutes after a fiery crash, they will have lost their chance for survival. In-flight
cabin fires On August 19, 1980 the flight crew of a a Saudi Arabian Airlines L-1011 received fire and smoke alerts shortly after takeoff from Ryad International Airport. The plane returned safely to the Airport and stopped on an taxiway. For still unexplained reasons the engines were not shut down for some minutes, the cabin was probably not depressurized, no door was opened from the inside, no evacuation took place. The Airport Fire Service was obviously untrained and without proper equipment to deal with such a situation. It took them nearly 25 minutes to gain access into the fuselage. In the meantime, all 301 people aboard, passengers and crew, had perished due to smoke inhalation and heat exposure. On June 2, 1983 an Air Canada DC-9 experienced an electric fire in the aft lavatory, which produced intensive smoke. Misjudgments of the pilots, lack of proper communication between the flight and cabin crew, as well as on the ground between the airport fire department and the local emergency services resulted in grim delays of proper procedures. In the end, 23 people, including the crew were able to evacuate and survived, while 23 other passenger perished. PLANNING
AND PREPAREDNESS Local emergency managers and rescue providers may believe there is little or no risk of an airplane crashing in their community. Recent tragedies have proven otherwise. It is impossible to predict the location of future airplane disasters and, therefore, it is essential to plan and prepare. A comprehensive Aviation Emergency Plan should describe the agencies involved (FAA, NTSB, FBI, Fire/Rescue/EMS, Hospitals, ARFF, Airline, Aircraft Manufacturer, Coast Guard, Military, Coroner, Law Enforcement, etc.) and their functions. The plan must cover aviation specific resources and procedures for the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) and the Mobile Command Post, including unified Command, and clear lines of Communication and Coordination for all response and recovery activities. Specific considerations should be given to Mass Casualty Management, On-Site Access Control, Mass Fatality Management, Family Assistance, Media Handling. Therefore:
Checklist
It must follow the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid), and should contain the following information:
and aviation specific hazards
RECOVERY / AFTERMATH Investigation
State, local, or airport emergency management should be prepared to support the federal agencies with resources (i.e., with personnel, facilities, and equipment). To illustrate the extent of an aircraft recovery operation, consider TWA flight 800 that crashed into the ocean close to Long Island on July 17, 1996. One million (!) pieces of the Boeing 747 were salvaged, which equals 96% of the airplane. Another 40,000 personal items belonging to the 230 persons who perished on board were also recovered. Mass
Fatality Management In the aftermath of the mid-air collision of a Boeing 727 and a small Cessna 172 above San Diego in 1985, fragments of 135 human bodies lay scattered in the streets, in trees, on rooftops and in suburban backyards. A mass fatality plan should be implemented in advance, covering
Media As in any crisis situation the media can become your best friend or your worst enemy. An airplane crash grabs the immediate attention of the national and international media. The Public Information Officer (PIO) must be prepared and trained in dealing with sometimes very confrontational media representatives or camera crews. An experienced PIO and a Press Information Center has to be assigned as soon as possible. Following the initial emergency operations the NTSB will usually be on-site and carry out press briefings and conferences. Local PIO's should never speculate about the cause of the accident. This is in the exclusive authority of the NTSB or other designated federal agencies. A clear and agreed understanding of all entities involved (fire, local and state police, EMS, hospitals, air-carrier, airport, emergency management, etc.) must be established as to who will be disclosing which particular details during the different phases of the incident. Varying messages from different agencies and speakers will cause rumors and negative publicity, as seen in the TWA 800 crash. Press briefings should be given at one location, after their appearance under the leadership of the NTSB. Family
Assistance Air carriers are now required to submit a plan to the NTSB addressing the needs of families in an aircraft accident. The airline is instructed to establish a family support operations center, secured facilities for the grieving relatives and friends, as well as logistical support, proper notification and communication procedures, etc. According to the Family Assistance Act, the American Red Cross (ACR) has to provide counseling services in coordination with the air carrier's disaster response team. ACR will also address the needs of families in cooperation with governmental agencies and others. Critical
Incident Stress/Emotional Impact Most aviation incidents are coming with
In the book, "In the Blink of an Eye - The FBI investigation of TWA Flight 800" Pat Milton describes the feelings of private boat owners who went out into the night at the crash scene, and instead of finding survivors, recovered bodies. Patty S. was exhausted and afraid of collapsing. When she had scrubbed down and got back in her clothes, someone handed her a slip of paper advising her that she might suffer nightmares in the coming weeks. The warning proved prescient. A few days later, on a television program about the crash, she would see a family video of the little girl in black sneakers. The girl was laughing. Patty recognized her as one of the bodies she had pulled up that night. Over the next few months, the image of the girl laughing was what she saw just before she woke up, sweat-drenched, in the dark. Or else she imagined what the passengers of Flight 800 experienced before the plane hit the water, alive on the way down. For months afterward, she would find comfort in the docks in the company of boaters who had also been out there that night. You could just stand there with them, looking out at the inlet and the ocean beyond; you didn't need to talk at all. Training,
Drills, and Full-Scale Exercises CONCLUSION The initial impact of an airplane accident is often survivable, as shown on many occasions. The final decision of life or death for the occupants is made by fast and skilled response. The only solution to saving lives and reducing the pain and suffering to people we do not even know yet, is joint planning and training, and a comprehensive emergency program. We are in charge of making the difference and we should take that matter very seriously. NOTES
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