Airport Emergency Drill

Expecting the unexpected, it's not an easy thing to do. But local emergency agencies did their best to do just that at Tulsa's International Airport on Wednesday. A mock disaster drill was held

Wednesday, May 9th 2007, 10:21 am

By: News On 6

Expecting the unexpected, it's not an easy thing to do. But local emergency agencies did their best to do just that at Tulsa's International Airport on Wednesday. A mock disaster drill was held with dozens of different agencies. The News On 6's Steve Berg reports organizers threw just about everything they could think of at the agencies, including a few surprises to keep them on their toes.

It certainly looks real enough, and Tulsa Fire Captain Larry Bowles says they tried to make it feel real too.

"Actually deployed foam onto the aircraft. We had the scenario with 105 souls on board a 737, a collision with a military aircraft," he said.

Some of the scenarios, besides the casualties, included a report of a sidewinder missile on board the military jet. But to simulate the same stress that would exist in a real emergency, they kept some of the scenarios secret from the participants until they were already well into the drill.

"Events popup, unforeseen things such as a hazardous materials release that we had right in the middle of our operation. All of a sudden, everything changes," said Bowles.

The airport is required to hold the drills every 3-years, but it's rare that they get to work with all of the different agencies like police and fire and hospitals. Wednesday's drill included everything from the FBI to the Red Cross, and Captain Bowles says communication is sometimes the most difficult part of an emergency.

"When people come in with different radio systems, getting everybody on that same channel, you can imagine from multi-agency response is pretty extreme," he said.

Captain Bowles says the drill took 4-months of planning just to fit everyone's schedule and get all the equipment they needed.

Southwest Airlines provided the plane that was used in the exercise.

SKYNEWS 6 flew over the exercise, a mock airplane crash at Tulsa International Airport. Click here to view the video.