By David Rattigan
The Boston Globe
BEVERLY, Mass. — There was fire on Runway 16 at Beverly Municipal Airport, with bodies strewn to either side of the wreck. Smoke billowed, and the stench of burning rubber drifted downwind.
Airport entrances in Danvers and Beverly had been secured by police, and fire trucks and ambulances sped to the runway, lights on, responding to the crash of a corporate jet.
The mayday call had come to the Beverly air control tower at 8:30 a.m., from a jet leased to a company at nearby Cherry Hill Office Park. Air traffic control cleared it for an emergency landing and put out an emergency call to the Beverly Fire Department. As the jet approached, the airport manager learned that it often transported executives as well as hazardous materials. With the radar showing the aircraft to be 8 miles away, a call from the tower asked what it was carrying, but got no response.
Beverly fire officials meanwhile, coordinated the response from surrounding towns, relaying information as it was received.
At 8:59, the jet touched down at high speed, spun on the runway, and flipped onto its back. It split into two pieces, and the tail burst into flames.
As firefighters arrived, they saw two bodies laying on the runway and another still in the cockpit.
It was all a test.
On June 11, the role of “the plane” was shared by a couple of donated vehicles — a car served as the tail and an SUV the cockpit — because there was no junk plane available. Two employees of a nearby aviation firm lay on their backs on the runway, with a dummy in the cockpit.
The objective of the full-scale disaster exercise was to improve coordination and better prepare local public safety agencies to deal with accidents at Beverly Municipal Airport, which has entrance gates in both Beverly and Danvers and also sits in part on Wenham land.
“The purpose is so that when we have a real accident, people are showing up and they know what they’re supposed to do, and it’s not the first time that we’ve laid eyes on each other,” said John Duval, airport safety and security coordinator.
“That’s what this is all about. We’re testing communication, testing command and control,” he said. “We’re not testing response time; we’re testing setup at the scene, and the tests went great. I’m not going to tell you everything was perfect, but we learned a lot.”
Paul Vitale, chairman of the Beverly Airport Commission, was enthusiastic about the result, particularly the communication aspects, which included a direct radio link from the tower to the Beverly Fire Department. He credited the airport’s safety and security team, working with fire and police officials from Beverly, Danvers, and Wenham, with developing the training exercise.
“We put together the team last year to come up with ways to make us safer and more secure,” Vitale said. “There was always a basic plan, but never an actual team.”
As outlined in the exercise report (dubbed “Operation Foxtrot” because it was actually held on the “Foxtrot” taxiway and not an actual runway), all of the entities had multiple duties and responsibilities. The air traffic control tower needed to relay information to the incident commander while also keeping planes in the air safe, while airport management needed to shut down the airport gates, communicate with airport businesses, and report to federal safety agencies among its checklist of duties.
Information was relayed to the control tower from the accident scene, and then from the control tower to Beverly Deputy Fire Chief Paul Cotter, the incident commander. Cotter coordinated the response with a radio link to public safety personnel from all towns.
A week before, those involved went through a half-day training session that included a tabletop exercise presented by Duval. On the day of the full-scale exercise, they were tossed a couple of curveballs — including the injured passengers and the pilot trapped inside the cockpit.
“They all said, ‘This is great, because we didn’t just want to put out a fire,’” said Richard “Ace” Chase, a former Danvers Fire Department lieutenant who is now owner of Cat Aviation (an airport business that served as operation headquarters) and one of those who planned the exercise. “You know how fast you can put a fire out. You’ve got to throw in some rescue, and dragging people out of the hot zone and all that other stuff.”
The crash scene provided firefighters with a good training experience, the incident commander said. “It brought out what we needed to do and what we’re going to look at,” said Cotter.
To conclude the exercise, public safety and airport personnel, along with representatives of the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board, met for a closed-door review of the exercise.
Cotter and Kevin Farrell, Danvers deputy fire chief, used access to water as an example of one area that needed to be addressed. The Middleton Fire Department provided a water tanker, but Farrell noted that it might take 45 minutes for the tanker to arrive in an actual emergency.
“We have 500 gallons on our Engine 1; we have 400 gallons on our Engine 3; they have 750 on their Engine 1,” Farrell said, noting that in case of a real fire, “You go through that pretty quick.
“We definitely learned a few things,” Farrell said. “It’s something you do need to practice, so that when the actual event does happen, it’s like second nature.”
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