Emergency services in action in Oban Airport exercise

A plane with engine trouble and nine people on board is coming in to land at Oban Airport from the south. It has an engine problem. The various emergency services are alerted and appropriate response units are tasked to get to the Airport.

The plane comes into view. Its engine gives out before it makes the runway. It lands short, in the water below the Falls of Lora at the entrance to Loch Etive – and gradually sinks. Some people are in the water, some may still be trapped in the sunken aircraft.

What happens now is that a massive spectrum of emergency services starts arriving on the scene as fast as possible and in whatever order this brings. As each arrives:

• They and their members must be logged (in case any rescuers themselves come to grief – head counts are critical)
• Each is given permission from the Control Tower to proceed down the runway to the scene of the incident. This is an operational airport and although it is immediately shut down for a two-hour period in any incident, there may be other planes too far into their own landing approach to be diverted – so no vehicle or personnel can be on the runway without clearance from Control Tower.
• Each is notified by the Control Tower of the radio channel allocated to the emergency services for the incident – so the services can now talk to each other on that channel directly. This is important because, for some time, the emergency services have been operating on independent radio communications which are not mutually compatible. Strathclyde Police are now on the Airwave system. Strathclyde Fire & Rescue are shortly to change to Airwave too. This will see two emergency services able to talk directly to each other wherever they are. The other emergency services obviously need to be on Airwave too – but there are cost considerations!
• The efforts of the various emergency services as they arrive must now be coordinated. Where an emergency is on the water, the actions of all services involved are coordinated by the Maritime & Coastguard Agency (MCA). Where an incident is land-based, the coordinating authority is the police.

In this case – which is a likely scenario for an emergency at the waterside Oban Airport – the immediate incident was in the water so the coordination was led by the MCA. When the response to the incident moved to being land-based, Strathclyde Police took over the coordinating role.

Permanent weighted booms with lit buoys at the outer ends are installed in the entrance to Loch Etive, aligned with the runway and supplied by VTMS, a Leicester-based company able to deliver and maintain the complete system. If a landing aircraft either overshoots or undershoots and goes into Loch Etive, these booms offer something for survivors in the water to catch on to; and create an area of safer water between them.

In terms of action:

• Oban Canoe Club provided dry-suited casualties in the water between the booms and some clinging to the booms themselves – all as escapees from the sunken plane.
• There was a fast motor boat on standby in case any of the ‘casualties’ or rescuers themselves got into trouble.
• Oban Airport’s in-house Fire & Rescue got line-shooting equipment to the shore and fired lines for the survivors in the water to catch and drew them ashore.
• Strathclyde Police and Fire & Rescue Officers search parties combed the north shore, south of the incident, where the fast flowing water would carry anyone who had not got into the safety of the boomed area. They found ‘bodies’ placed there beforehand to test their search skills.
• Oban Lifeboat arrived at speed. Unable to come ashore, it launched a small rubber dinghy with a fast outboard to pick up survivors clinging to the booms.
• The Lifeboat itself then searched the south shore of the entrance to Loch Etive below the Connel Bridge. This is where the water flows fastest, carrying anyone in it off to the west at an alarming speed. After this fruitless search the Lifeboat went west, below the point of land at the end of the airfield, to sweep for any survivors or bodies already taken out there.
• In the meantime, Strathclyde Fire and Rescue Service had two appliances arrive at full pelt – one from Oban to the south and the volunteer appliance from Appin in the north. This is standard practice, guarding against any obstruction on the road that might delay a single appliance. The two appliances immediately got their fire hoses out to be at the ready should the crashed aircraft go on fire.
• Strathclyde Police were on the scene, with their co-ordinator wearing a highly visible quartered blue and white tabard over his yellow jacket. Liaison officers from each service wear tabards to make them immediately identifiable to members of the other emergency services. In a real incident, John McMillan from Strathclyde Police HQ in Glasgow, present here as an Observer, would be called in to act in an advisory capacity to the local force which would be quickly on the scene.
• An Ambulance arrived and the in-house Airport team inflated a high-vis orange tent very quickly. This acts as a first assessment and treatment centre. A Trauma Bag of instant kit was available there.
• ‘Casualties’ were led from the shore wrapped in blankets and taken to the tent.
• ‘Bodies’ were brought in from the farther shore.
• A head count revealed that only seven had been recovered, alive or dead, from the nine known to have been aboard. The presumption must be that the remaining two are trapped in the sunken plane and, given the water temperature, are unlikely still to be alive.

In reality, at this point a team of Strathclyde Police divers would be called in from Glasgow; and a floating crane would be requisitioned – probably from Liverpool, to raise the wreck of the crashed plane from the sea bed. Because this was an exercise, such high-cost actions did not need to be taken.

The exercise was now effectively over. The Emergency Services teams retired together to the Airport building to debrief and to identify points for improvement and refinement, to be ready for the real thing.

As a condition of licence, Oban Airport is legally obliged to conduct an emergency exercise at least once a year and this was the first since the Airport received it’s licence last January.

The services involved were:

• Oban Airport’s in-house Fire and Rescue Team which will normally be the first response unit at a airport incident and whose senior officer devises and directs the exercise
• Argyll & Bute Council led by Emergency Planning Officer Carol Keeley. In a real emergency she would call in whatever Council services are necessary, given the nature of the emergency. These might include Road Services to close roads and set diversions; and Social Services to assist uninjured survivors and anxious families and friends of aircrew and passengers arriving at the airport terminal. On this occasion, along with Stewart Turner, Head of Argyll & Bute Council’s Roads and Amenity Services, she was there as an Observer.
• Strathclyde Fire and Rescue Services, led by Group Commander David Sloss
• Strathclyde Police – the local force, with John McMillan from Glasgow HQ present as an Observer.
• The Scottish Ambulance Service
• The Maritime and Coastguard Authority (MCA). For this exercise, Oban Lifeboat also had an Umpire ashore – Douglas Craig – watching the integration of the various services. Interestingly, as the Lifeboat swept the south shore with its fast-running westwards current, Douglas Craig pointed out that the current on the north shore by the end of the runway had turned east. In reality a search into Loch Etive itself would now be necessary. This awareness of Douglas’s highlighted the imperative for the right local knowledge to be on hand in such incidents.
• Dave Butt, Quality Manager of Highland Airways, the only operator currently providing services out of Oban Airport, attended as an Observer.
• Lynda Syed, Head of Communications for Argyll & Bute Council, attended to support interested media who had arranged to be present – the three-man For Argyll team and The Oban Times.

A genuine incident of this kind creates two emergencies to be dealt with simultaneously. The obvious one results from the plane crash.

There is a second one, with the families and friends of aircrew and passengers. They have heard of the incident. They have little information on its gravity and no information at all on the situation of the person they know to have been on board. They need a number to phone. The person answering the phone must be in kept in possession of all up to date information that can be released. Those arriving at the airport itself will need to be looked after, informed accurately and possibly consoled.

This parallel emergency is to be included in a future emergency exercise at the Airport.

So – how did it go? The primary purpose of the exercise was to test the coordination between the various emergency services that would be involved in such an incident. In real life, activity would be fast and furious and there would be more noise. In this case people went about their tasks confidently, methodically, fairly quietly, often unhurriedly.

What they did mattered less than that they did it together. With this exercise behind them, a stop-watch is an obvious addition to the next one.

For Argyll would have to remark on the calibre of the leaders of the various services involved and of those observing. The degree of analytic attention and the level of expertise and insights brought to bear was impressive.

Let’s hope they never have to do it for real – but if they do, they know what they have to do.

For Argyll will shortly publish a video news item on this exercise, which is currently being edited by John Patrick, For Argyll.

All photos accompanying this article are by Rebecca Martin, For Argyll