Firefighters with the Aspen-Pitkin County Airport’s (ASE) Sardy Field Fire Department doused a mock airplane with water after it was set ablaze Friday morning.
The fake aircraft was connected to propane tanks, which airport staff said would cause the fire to reignite after firefighters drenched the blaze, similar to the way jet fuel could reignite a fire in a real crash.
The training is required every three years by the Federal Aviation Administration, and David Schneider, ASE’s operations manager, was acting as the liaison between incident command and the airport operations center.
He said the goal of the exercise was to receive feedback from evaluators and implement any constructive criticism.
“We actually are hoping for the bad evaluation,” Schneider said. “The bad evaluation shows us what we need to work on, what we need to fix. And then we incorporate those changes to our future response.”
When the exercise began, it took the Sardy Field Fire Department less than a minute to arrive on the scene, where they shot water at the fake airplane from the truck.
As they covered the airplane with water, medical teams with the Aspen Ambulance District began running triage, assessing which patients, played by community volunteers, had the most severe injuries and directing resources accordingly.
Evaluators were generally impressed with the firefighters and the medical crews, and said that everything went smoothly.
Curtis Hainer is the fire chief at the Grand Junction Regional Airport and was serving as an evaluator in Friday’s exercise. He said where emergency crews typically falter is in their communications strategy.
“You get law enforcement and medical and fire and unified command,” Hainer said. “It's not just one certain person or entity. You're flooding the airwaves and getting your communications through is very hard sometimes. That's generally where everybody lacks.”
When asked how the scenario went, Andrew Treat, ASE’s aircraft rescue captain, said communication is always something they need to work on, but he didn’t see anything “too glaring.”
Some of the community volunteers participating in the scenario including some younger children.
Sam Scher and Bobby Metallo were dressed up with fake blood and knee pads that depicted broken bones or metal protruding from their legs.
Amy Scher, Sam’s mother, encouraged the boys to join the scenario.
“I just thought it would be a good opportunity to contribute to the community, and in case a real situation happened like this, and that it would be really fun for them.” Scher said.
