Area fire departments get crash course in airport emergencies

Lynchburg News & Advance
Published: June 19, 2008

Propane-fueled flames rose in the air next to an airplane’s fuselage near the Lynchburg Regional Airport’s runway Tuesday night.

Carried by the wind and burning more than twice the height of the Brookville-Timberlake volunteer firefighters standing ready at the hose, the fire was created to test the skills of local firefighters in response to an airport disaster.

By the end of the day Wednesday, the plane had “burned” more than a dozen times already.

The fuel spill simulator and the fuselage travel around the state’s nine commercial airports in the spring and fall as part of a training requirement of the Federal Aviation Administration. It is one of three such training devices in the country.

This week it is stationed in Lynchburg, training firefighters for the airport, the Lynchburg and Danville fire departments and the volunteer fire departments of Lyn-Dan Heights, Brookville-Timberlake, Evington, Concord and Monelison. These fire departments would most likely be

called in if there were an emergency.

The simulator arrived over the weekend and will train almost 100 firefighters before it leaves again this weekend.

“This is scenario-based training,” said Tom Phalen, aircraft rescue firefighting chief for the Virginia Department of Fire Programs. “We treat it just like a call.”

The training is part of an FAA requirement to conduct annual live-fire drills. The airport’s firefighters have to complete this training once a year.

The simulated fuel spill fire burns across 1,300 square feet, set in pans that have sensors that determine if water is being applied properly. When it’s extinguished correctly, the sensors cut off the fuel supply to that pan.

The same goes for the fires set in the fuselage. It can mimic an engine, wheel or cabin fire, depending on what the firefighters want to train for. Its wing and engine can be reconfigured to look like different types of planes.

“Any training is good training,” said Jerry Womack, chief of the Brookville-Timberlake Volunteer Fire Department. “We come to tune up our skills. With fuel like that, it burns extremely hot. If something does go wrong, there’s a multitude of causes. I hope we don’t ever have to use it.”

Womack responded to a plane crash at the airport one night in the late 1980s. The plane carried a couple from Concord who were flying back from a conference.

He remembers the largest pieces left of the plane were no bigger than a one-gallon bucket.

Airplane-related disasters can happen anywhere and they do not have to be at airports, Phalen said.

“By companies training with the airport, they get an idea of what to do,” he said.

Edwin Hall, an airport firefighter, said the training is critical, particularly since each airport firefighter works alone.

In a crash or fire, surrounding fire departments will be called in to help, he said.

The airport has a specialized fire truck equipped so that one person can extinguish many kinds of fires alone until backup can arrive.

The truck has a bumper water turret and a roof-mounted one. It can spray foam and dry chemical agents. It also carries a set of hydraulic tools for extricating victims from wreckage.

It is essential that area firefighters who might respond to the airport have that same training, Hall said.

“It’s like a tin can,” Hall said. “There’s not a lot of places for the fire, heat and smoke to go until it vents through a window or burns through the top of the fuselage.”

For the week’s exercise, the fuselage resembles the small commuter jets that fly into the airport, complete with rudimentary controls that firefighters must shut off before extinguishing the fire.

Phalen said handling an aircraft fire is so different from a structural fire that his goal is to make sure any firefighter who responds is trained properly, regardless of whether it’s a fire or another type of emergency.

“I know you can put water on the fire, but you got to think about the times you pull up on a plane and there’s no fire.”