When the Siren Sounds

The sound of the siren going off at the airport jolts one, no matter how long they have worked here. When the air traffic controllers activate the siren that means that a pilot has declared an emergency and everything else going on at the airport is going to take a back seat to the emergency until it is resolved. On Tuesday July 27, 2010, just before 9 am, the siren sounded. A commercial aircraft 757 with 179 souls on board had a report of smoke in the aircraft and was going to be on the ground in less than eight minutes.

At this point, the airport’s emergency plan goes from a bunch of words and charts in a book, to real life first responders and support personnel on the ground. Yeager Airport is a joint Civil/Military Airport, and the West Virginia Air National Guard maintains a full time professional Aircraft Rescue and Fire Fighting Unit in place, and they are the unit that responds to all airfield emergencies. The Kanawha County Metro 911 Center handles the dispatch and communications with all other responding agencies and support personnel, and those calls go out instantly to all agencies either by radio communications, or via an automated telephone system to support personnel.

A pre-determined response for each type of incident is included in the emergency plan and each agency knows what equipment and personnel is needed to respond to the airport based on the size of the aircraft and the type of emergency. The Federal Aviation Administration also requires each commercial airport to complete an annual review of the plan and every three years to do a live drill of the plan to practice and identify any areas of the plan that need to be improved or changed.
The public has a right to know what is happening during an emergency and they depend upon the local press to provide information. A Public Information Officer is identified in the plan to provide regular updates and notices to the public at large and the press. Using the technology available, the PIO provides regular updates using The Airport’s Website, Facebook and Twitter which local media monitor and are able to receive timely factual and accurate information. If there is a need a press briefing will be held to answer questions and provide additional information.

Our response team, including, airlines serving Yeager, the Transportation Security Administration, Kanawha County Sheriff Department, Charleston Police, Fire and EMT, Kanawha County Ambulance, Pinch Fire Department, Kanawha Valley Regional Transportation, CAMC and Health Net, along with the other agencies mentioned above, work in accordance with the National Incident Management System protocols to establish a joint command and perform the functions outlined in the emergency plan.
Yeager Airport has experienced quite a few pilot declared emergencies of planes that are not bound for Charleston, but rather experience problems near our airspace and make a decision to land at CRW to safely deal with the problem. Each time the airport response team has handled the issues in a professional manner and in the after action reviews we have identified ways that our response can be improved.

I didn’t hear the siren on Tuesday because I was on vacation, and I was out of town last summer when a 737 declared an emergency due to a hole in its fuselage nor was I in town when an aircraft reject takeoff and was stopped by the Engineered Material Arresting System. I am thankful that through modern communications I can stay in contact with the airport response team via my cell phone during an emergency and offer any support that I can. The best part of the entire response team is that it is not dependent upon a person, but rather a group of organizations that know their jobs and have highly trained and dedicated personnel that have the safety of others as their highest priority.