Mock Plane Collision At Airport Helps Dalton, Whitfield Agencies Train For Emergency

What would happen if two airplanes collided at the Dalton Municipal Airport?

Hopefully, no one will ever have to find out the answer to that question, but just in case, several local emergency agencies responded to such a mock accident at the airport Thursday morning.

Taking part in the full scale exercise, which is held every two years under the guidance of the Local Emergency Planning Committee, were Whitfield Fire, Dalton Fire, Dalton Police, Whitfield 911, Whitfield EMA, Hamilton EMS, Dalton Airport, and Dalton High School.

“Hopefully, nothing like this will ever happen,” Whitfield EMA Director Claude Craig said while watching the exercise, “but you know, you never know.

We’ve got to prepare ourselves accordingly and be prepared the best that we can.”

The culmination of a year’s worth of training and planning by local agencies, the exercise featured a scenario in which a plane being fueled by a truck is clipped by another plane.

Firefighters had to wash away the spilled fuel on the pavement (portrayed by flour poured onto the ground), but not before they took care of three injured passengers lying on the pavement between the two planes and then removed four more passengers from inside one of the smoking planes.

Students from Ken Wiggins’ class at Dalton High School, as they have done for several years, convincingly played the roles of the victims, thanks to makeup.

“We’re trying to establish and see where our weaknesses are,” Mr. Craig said of the goal of the activity. “One of the biggest things is always communication, whether it’s an exercise like this, an actual event, or a marriage … whatever. Communication is one of the biggest things we have to master.

“We’re also testing the equipment to see if we’re able to do what we would need to do in a real life event like this,” he added.

The response was being monitored by evaluators Bo Nicholson and Nathan Saylors of the Gordon County Fire Department and Scott Radeker, director of Hamilton EMS. Another 10 people served as controllers, who had helped design the exercise over the past several months and spent Thursday morning keeping a watchful eye on the activities to make sure all participants remained safe, especially the students.

“For a successful outcome, we've got to have collaboration from all agencies involved,” Mr. Craig said. “I've said many times when you have a serious incident, the patch comes off the sleeve, and all departments are working as one."

Mr. Craig and Deputy EMA Director Jeff Ownby said the exercise went well, noting that participants gathered for a “hot wash” immediately afterwards while the event was still fresh on their minds to give a preliminary evaluation of what went right and what went wrong. A more formal “after action report” in the coming weeks will summarize the overall response to the event and offer suggestions on ways to make improvements.

Mr. Ownby said the exercise was the culmination of a year’s worth of planning and training by local public safety workers, including a tabletop exercise in August to talk about the mock accident, then more recently three nights of class in an airport hangar learning things like the different kinds of aircraft there, what kind of fuel was on site, where the runways are, the whole airport property and the land around it, and the most likely locations of a hazardous material incident.

Mr. Craig and Mr. Ownby praised the staff at Dalton Airport for their cooperation in making the exercise possible.

“We came to them last year and told them what we wanted to do,” Mr. Craig said, “and they were very receptive. They said, yeah, we need to do that. Then they had a representative at all of our planning meetings and played the major part in getting us the airplanes and fuel truck and such as that. They did a great job.”

The exercise was the first such event held at the airport, he said. “We’d been wanting to do an exercise at the airport with simulated mass casualties because we want to be prepared,” Mr. Craig said. “Hopefully it won’t happen, but we need to be ready in case it ever does.”