MBOMBELA – An ordinary day quickly turned into chaos accompanied by the screaming of sirens when smoke billowed from an aircraft at Kruger Mpumalanga International Airport (KMIA) on Tuesday morning.
KMI Airport Fire and Rescue services extinguished the fire and swiftly removed all the passengers. Local emergency services assisted in the evacuation and removal of the passengers and the South African Police Services contained the crash area for investigation.
The craft had experienced a hydraulic failure and was forced to do a belly landing. Various stakeholder managed the emergency from the airport’s emergency control centre.
Although the incident looked very real it was actually a premeditated emergency training exercise required once every two years. Despite a few hiccups when the emergency was declared at 09:00, the operation was concluded within a half an hour.
The drill is designed to test multi-agency coordination and their joint readiness in the event of a disaster at KMIA. This training exercise is re-enacted as a phase-three emergency, and is executed as follows:
Phase one, also known as the uncertainty phase, is where doubt exists as to the safety of an aircraft and its occupants.
Phase two, which is also referred to as the alert phase, is a situation wherein apprehension exists as to the safety of an aircraft and its occupants
Phase three, or distress phase, is a situation wherein there is reasonable certainty that an aircraft and its occupants are threatened by grave and imminent danger or require immediate assistance.
The exercise proved to be very successful.
However, a number of concerns were raised during the debriefing which included planning that was not as good as it could have been and communication which was also not quite not up to standard. It was mentioned that in the next training exercise, more attention should be given to internal issues.
Other than that, it ran smoothly and all stakeholders were congratulated on their quick response time.
Photos: Hennie Homann
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