Emergency response procedures tested at Ogle Airport

The emergency response team at the Eugene F. Correia International Airport at Ogle, East Coast Demerara was tested Friday to correct any deficiencies the response team may have and also allow members of the team to familiarise themselves with key personnel and agencies to understand their role in the case of an emergency.

The simulation mimicked that of a crashed ATR 72 Aircraft running off the runway causing injuries to passengers.

William Senasee of the Airport’s Safety and Security Department said it is the responsibility of the emergency response team to save lives, to preserve the property of all parties involved and to ensure that the operation of the airport returns to normal at the soonest in these cases.

“At the end of the day, the full-scale emergency exercise is to test our capability to handle an emergency for the different types of aircraft that are operating at ogle.

“The largest type of aircraft operating at the Ogle Airport…is the ATR 72 Aircraft which is operated by Liat and carries about 70 passengers so we have to have the capacity of dealing with an emergency of that nature or of that size,” Senasee said.

The response by the emergency team was four minutes; all personnel were in place assisting injured passengers and taking them to the triage area.

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Observing the simulation was Director General of the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority, Egbert Field who explained that this is done every year to fulfill its requirement in terms of certification.

“It was nicely executed and we [the coordinators] will now sit and look over the details to see if there are any comments or items that need to be looked at.

“The response time was good, could have been better; we commenced the exercise and within 3-4 minutes the fire service was out there, so like I said we will look at the stopwatches and from my vantage point in the tower I would say the response time was in standard operating procedure,” Field said.  (Colwyn Abrams)