Emergency crews put to the test

A wheel on a plane landing at Albany Regional Airport starts smoking; while passengers disembark, it explodes and hits flight crew, while a passenger in the terminal appears to have had a heart attack.

This was the hectic scenario Albany’s emergency services and airport staff were faced with last Friday.

The exercise, which runs every two years, tests the local police, fire brigade, St John Ambulance and Department of Fire and Emergency Services response to an incident or crash at the airport.

Airport manager Stuart Jamieson said it was an important procedure to ensure all services were prepared for real incidents.

“It’s an opportunity for a full review of procedures we have in place to ensure all agencies are ready to respond in the event of an emergency, enabling them to continually improve,” he said.

“We try to make it is as real as possible to actually learn from the experience, so only key people knew what was going to happen today and the rest would get, what they’d think was a real call out.”

He said the last serious airport incident was a fatal crash at Racewars in Albany in March.

Albany police Senior Sergeant Grant Pollard said the drill went smoothly but a few minor discrepancies were identified which would be discussed at a debrief.

“We’ll have an agency debrief in the near future and anything from that will be forwarded to our local emergency management committee so that it’s spread out across the whole of the district side,” he said.