AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2016 - 76
"It's not the fastest-paced job out here. But when
there is a call, it's zero to 60. It has the potential
for catastrophic events." - David Bush
Fargo is required to meet standards
for a smaller Index B airfield. In fact,
they meet the standards for Index C
and have the capacity for Index E.
"We haven't had a lot of large
incidents out here," Bush says.
"We've had a lot of the smaller type
stuff. Someone skids off the runway.
Someone's nose gear collapses. A
lot of belly landings. It's just amazing watching some of these pilots
when they do a belly landing. Some
are good. Some can work the prop
and they don't do any damage to
the engines. Some just total the
airplane. It's amazing to see the different skill sets.
"We use the principle that if
people are trying to get out of an aircraft, we're not going to impede that.
Our main goal is to get people out of
that unsurvivable environment. But
once we enter an aircraft, the same
principles apply as in a structure
fire. It's just that the house is sitting
on a large amount of fuel.
"It's not the fastest-paced job out
here," he says. "But when there is a
call, it's zero to 60. It has the potential for catastrophic events."
'THAT'S WHAT WE TRAIN FOR'
Training is ongoing and intense.
Each shift is tested at least once
a month. Every firefighter also is
an emergency medical responder.
There is practice for small airplanes
as well as large.
"We just tested our large-scale
crash exercise with the city of Fargo,
F-M Ambulance, and Fargo P.D.,"
Bush says. "Our scenario this past
year was a CRJ-900 that veered
left on takeoff, clipped a wing, and
crashed. For the CRJ-900 exercise
76 | AOPA PILOT January 2016
we had 70 passengers. We had two
buses and about 50 volunteers. We
had about 20 cardboard cutouts, too.
There were evaluators from each
department of the exercise-someone evaluating the fire section, the
EMS section, the law enforcement
section, communications, command
and control, an overall exercise
director. Something always comes
up. Communications is always an
issue when you're dealing with
multiple agencies on multiple frequencies, but we did very well."
Would Fargo be ready for a situation similar to the 1989 crash landing
of a DC-10 in Sioux City, Iowa? Like
Fargo, Sioux City was a National
Guard base; 285 trained people were
able to aid in the emergency.
"I am very confident in the
responders in this part of the country," Bush says. "If I had 20 minutes,
we would have a full, county-wide
response. Even if we have no warning-even if it's something that
happens on takeoff or landing-
it's still going to be a county-wide
response. We'd be calling in rural
ambulances, for example, just for
the sheer volume. That's what we
train for."
Most GA airfields, however, are
a lot smaller than Fargo's Hector
International. Just a few miles
southeast of Fargo, the airport in
Moorhead, Minnesota, relies on city
resources for crash/fire response.
According to Steve Edner, airport
manager, there are no firefighting
resources on the airfield. It's just too
small. The airport does not have an
FAA index rating. Twice a year the
city fire department comes by for a
familiarization tour, but they have
not run any training exercises that
he can recall.
At airports that do have their
own crash/fire department, the
responsibilities of the department
often go well beyond one airplane
behaving badly. This is especially
true when the events and the crowds
get large.
"The Fargo Airshow," Bush
says, "is a tough beast to get your
head around as far as emergency
response. You've got so many different types of things you need to
prepare for. You've got hundreds
of people, sometimes in a hot environment. You've got medical issues.
Heat stroke in the spectator area
is part of our emergency response.
And in today's environment, you
don't know what kind of people are
out there and what kind of harm
they want to do to other people. For
the airshow, security falls under our
emergency response. We coordinate
with the police department and the
sheriff 's office, but it's my office's
responsibility to develop the plan."
Bush said the industry implemented changes after an airshow
pilot was killed in a crash during a
performance at another airport and
the first vehicle didn't arrive on scene
until more than five minutes later.
"Any time there is an aircraft in the
air, we're in full uniform, full bunker
gear, trucks running, ready to go."
Even though the department has
shrunk, the experience in Fargo is
deep. The least-senior firefighter has
11 years in service. The oldest has
been there 33 years. "What used to
be six weeks of training," Bush says,
"is now four months.
"It's not a well-known career
field," he says. "It's a specialty career
field, despite the Hollywood scenes
with the big trucks and the silver
suits. It requires extensive amounts
of training. If we're busy, somebody's having a bad day."
AOPA
W. SCOTT OLSEN is an English
professor at Concordia College in
Moorhead, Minnesota.
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