Airport exercise tests emergency crash response

It was a gruesome scene that greeted emergency services at Marlborough Airport.

Passengers on a crashed plane were dead, others lost limbs and had horrific injuries as airport staff and firefighters turned up to the ‘‘Oliver Airlines’’ plane on the runway on Monday night.

But like the airline’s name it was a made up exercise, giving a number of agencies a ‘‘hard but realistic’’ test of their response to a major incident.

First responders, the Defence Force fire rescue crew were at the scene within the target time of three minutes. All other agencies involved were at the site within 15 minutes.

Marlborough Airport operations and safety manager Steve Holtum said the drill was run every couple of years.

‘‘So if it was to happen, and it’s a very rare thing for an aircraft to crash down the runway, we hope that training and the learning from it will get us all better prepared,’’ Holtum said.

Representatives from Sounds Air and Air New Zealand also attended.

Among the injuries of the 36 ‘‘patients’’ involved in the exercise were lost limbs and open wounds with fake blood.

‘‘For a lot of the new volunteers, with the likes of the fire brigade or the ambulance or whoever were first responders that hadn’t been to a crash exercise before, it was probably very good, because some of the injuries looked horrific,’’ Holtum said.

He said the biggest learning they took from the exercise was communication between the organisations.

‘‘It’s the learning that is the gold for us,’’ Holtum said. ‘‘It helps us develop and change what happens every few years.’’

‘‘I think the big thing is, each agency is learning what it can improve on within itself, I don’t pretend to know what others [agencies] have learnt or need to improve on,’’ Holtum said.

The Civil Defence emergency management centre in Blenheim were also actively involved.

‘‘In a real crash, it could go on for 24 hours or more,’’ Holtum said. ‘‘Civil Defence have a lot of resources that are available to the airport.’’

For example, they had trucks, lights and tents you would need in an emergency. He said the Wairau Hospital ran their own drills so no ‘‘passengers’’ were taken off site.