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Thursday, June 19, 2008 Area fire departments get
crash course in handling airport emergency By Carrie J. Sidener The Lynchburg (VA) News Advance Propane-fueled
flames rose in the air next to an airplane’s fuselage near the Lynchburg
Regional Airport’s runway Tuesday night. Carried by the wind and burning more than twice the
height of the Brookville-Timberlake volunteer firefighters standing ready at
the hose, the fire was created to test the skills of local firefighters in
response to an airport disaster. By the end of the day Wednesday, the plane had
“burned” more than a dozen times already. The fuel spill simulator and the fuselage travel around
the state’s nine commercial airports in the spring and fall as part of a
training requirement of the Federal Aviation Administration. It is one of three
such training devices in the country. This week it is stationed in Lynchburg, training
firefighters for the airport, the Lynchburg and Danville fire departments and
the volunteer fire departments of Lyn-Dan Heights, Brookville-Timberlake,
Evington, Concord and Monelison. These fire departments would most likely be called
in if there were an emergency. The simulator arrived over the weekend and will train
almost 100 firefighters before it leaves again this weekend. “This is scenario-based training,” said Tom
Phalen, aircraft rescue firefighting chief for the Virginia Department of Fire
Programs. “We treat it just like a call.” The training is part of an FAA requirement to conduct
annual live-fire drills. The airport’s firefighters have to complete this
training once a year. The simulated fuel spill fire burns across 1,300 square
feet, set in pans that have sensors that determine if water is being applied
properly. When it’s extinguished correctly, the sensors cut off the fuel
supply to that pan. The same goes for the fires set in the fuselage. It can
mimic an engine, wheel or cabin fire, depending on what the firefighters want
to train for. Its wing and engine can be reconfigured to look like different
types of planes. “Any training is good training,” said Jerry
Womack, chief of the Brookville-Timberlake Volunteer Fire Department. “We
come to tune up our skills. With fuel like that, it burns extremely hot. If
something does go wrong, there’s a multitude of causes. I hope we
don’t ever have to use it.” Womack responded to a plane crash at the airport one
night in the late 1980s. The plane carried a couple from Concord who were
flying back from a conference. He remembers the largest pieces left of the plane were no
bigger than a one-gallon bucket. Airplane-related disasters can happen anywhere and they
do not have to be at airports, Phalen said. “By companies training with the airport, they get
an idea of what to do,” he said. Edwin Hall, an airport firefighter, said the training is
critical, particularly since each airport firefighter works alone. In a crash or fire, surrounding fire departments will be
called in to help, he said. The airport has a specialized fire truck equipped so that
one person can extinguish many kinds of fires alone until backup can arrive. The truck has a bumper water turret and a roof-mounted
one. It can spray foam and dry chemical agents. It also carries a set of
hydraulic tools for extricating victims from wreckage. It is essential that area firefighters who might respond
to the airport have that same training, Hall said. “It’s like a tin can,” Hall said.
“There’s not a lot of places for the fire, heat and smoke to go
until it vents through a window or burns through the top of the
fuselage.” For the week’s exercise, the fuselage resembles the
small commuter jets that fly into the airport, complete with rudimentary
controls that firefighters must shut off before extinguishing the fire. Phalen said handling an aircraft fire is so different
from a structural fire that his goal is to make sure any firefighter who
responds is trained properly, regardless of whether it’s a fire or
another type of emergency. “I know you can put water on the fire, but you got
to think about the times you pull up on a plane and there’s no
fire.” |
