More than 500 personnel from various departments including about 200 from the CISF participated in a full-scale mock emergency exercise at the Rajiv Gandhi Interna-tional Airport on Tuesday.
The mock drill was designed to check the level of preparedness at RGIA in tackling various emergencies including air crashes. A situation was simulated of hundreds of passengers lying around with varying injuries, some requiring immediate attention and some who could wait longer for treatment.
An airport official told Deccan Chronicle that the mock drill was carried out with all the seriousness of a real life situation. The rule book was followed to the core, cordoning of the area, followed by evacuation of the acutely injured to less critically injured, rushing them to the nearest hospitals with emergency services, followed by attempts to save the property to ensure minimum damage to the property and finally the retrieval of the black box, which contains all the on-board data and helps identify the cause of the crash.
A routine drill such as this is carried out as per the DGCA rules to test the airport’s emergency preparedness and the degree of co-ordination among participating departments. It is also aimed at ensuring that the Airport Emergency Plan of RGIA and International Civil Aviation Organisation guidelines are followed in letter and spirit. It is carried out once in two years. Agencies like the CISF, Police, AP fire-fighters, hospitals, Jet Airways (partner airline in the exercise), ambulance services, AP State Disaster Response team, and concerned departments of GHIAL participated in the exercise. The exercise was successful and proved that the response time was in line with the norms.
Officials said that no inconvenience was caused to normal airport operations during the drill which began at 1.40 pm and ended at 3.30 pm. An official said all the departments involved in the exercise later evaluated the state of preparedness and were reportedly satisfied with the same.