Teams prepare for plane crashes

Officials say a plane crash is only a remote possibility, but they still must be ready to handle one if it happens
By BOB JACKSON
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
VIENNA -- Huge trucks pull out of the fire bays at the Youngstown Air Reserve Base here, rolling towards a burning C-130 Hercules cargo plane nearby.
There's been an explosion, and a report of smoke and fire inside the plane.
"Two souls unaccounted for," a voice says over the radio as firefighters in foil-colored suits scramble off trucks and rush into the burning plane.
Within two minutes, the victims are located and carried outside the plane, then helped to a makeshift first-aid station about 40 yards away. Meantime, crews are pumping water onto the plane to put out the fire.
This time they are lucky -- the fire, smoke and injuries are not real.
Several carried out: It's just one of the many rescue drills carried out at the air base each year in the event of an actual disaster involving one of their planes. It's rare that one of the base's 16 C-130s is involved in an accident either on or off the base, but crews want to be ready, just in case.
"Our No. 1 thing is training and exercising. You can't exercise enough," said Linda Beil, Trumbull County Emergency Management Agency director.
Because the air base is in Trumbull County, the EMA is responsible for ensuring that things at the plant are in place to handle disasters there. Most drills involve simulating plane crashes, although other scenarios are also played out.
"We try to drill on things that are likely to happen," Beil said. "Then if it does happen, we'll know what to do."
Requirements: Louis A. Cox, readiness chief, said base personnel are required to hold training exercises at least every three months for dealing with a major accident, which is anything that causes loss of life or at least $1 million in property damage.
Every three years, the air base's military personnel stage a full-scale disaster drill to coordinate cooperation and communication with civilian disaster and emergency service agencies.
"If an accident happens off the [military] installation, it's the local municipality's jurisdiction and we are just there to help them," Cox said.
Personnel from the air base are sometimes summoned to help even if the crash involves a commercial airliner instead of a military plane, helping to secure area and pitching in with cleanup, says Lt. Col. Darryl Hartman, operations group commander.
Each county has its own plan to handle an airplane crash, Beil said. If a C-130 or any other plane goes down in a particular county, handling the aftermath becomes that county's responsibility, Cox said.
But a big crash can cause problems for local emergency management staffs.
"My greatest fear is any event that causes mass casualties," said James R. Thompson, Mercer County EMA director. "It can be a plane crash or it can be a tractor at the tractor pull that runs out of control and hits the stands. Then you've got 200 people hurt."
Using a regional plan: Most counties don't have enough ambulances and emergency staff to handle such a large number of injured people, Thompson said. That's when officials have to implement a regional plan in which emergency personnel are called in from surrounding counties to assist.
"There are just not enough emergency personnel to go around in an extreme emergency," said Walter Duzzny, Mahoning County EMA director. "You have to call for help."
Each local county has such a regional plan in place, but actually using it would be a logistical nightmare because of the tremendous amount of coordination it would require, Duzzny and Thompson said.
Besides the problems of having to treat and transport victims to hospitals, officials must be ready to deal with victims' families, Thompson said.
He said studies have shown that an average of 20 family members show up for every plane crash victim, looking for information and answers.
A good disaster-management plan has to include a way to keep track of which hospital each victim is sent to, so relatives aren't sent on a wild goose chase, Thompson said.
"You could have to deal with hundreds of people who already have a lot of anguish and a lot of pain and a lot of anger," he said. "You have to manage that."
Plans in place: Beil said if there is a mass casualty accident, such as a plane crash, in Trumbull County, funeral directors would set up a temporary morgue in a hangar at the air base. Refrigerator trucks are already lined up to move in and preserve bodies until they are identified and delivered to funeral homes.
"People don't realize the plans that we have in place and the things we are capable of handling," Beil said.
The same plan is in place in each of the other counties, she said. It can be modified to fit any mass-casualty disaster.
Emergency response crews in each county practice constantly so the plans will become second-nature, though Beil said she's sometimes frustrated at the lack of participation by local volunteer firefighters when her agency provides training programs.
"Then when something happens, they're just standing there because they don't know what to do," she said.
If a military plane from the air base is involved in a crash, the reserves will send personnel to assist with scene management and cleanup, said Hartman.
Safe track record: But he said the chance of a C-130 falling out of the sky is extremely slim, he said. It's one of the oldest planes used by the military, but has one of the safest track records. The air base has only C-130s.
"The C-130 is a very reliable air frame. You very seldom hear of anything happening with them," Cox said. He attributed the plane's successful safety record to a solid basic design that has been fine-tuned and improved over the years.
Also contributing to the C-130's stellar safety record is the fact that mechanics must follow a strict checklist when performing maintenance or repairs on them, Hartman said. And if the need to follow orders isn't enough, military mechanics have an added incentive for making sure the planes are ready to fly: Once the repairs are done, they get on and fly with the crew, Hartman said.
"They have a vested interest in making sure that it gets done right," he said.
Preparing just in case: An airplane crash is among the least likely causes of mass casualties in this area, but local officials still have to prepare in case one ever happens, Thompson said. They need to look no farther than Beaver County, Pa., to see the chaos a large plane crash can cause.
That was the site of one of the worst crashes in history in September 1994, when USAir Flight 427 plunged into a hillside about seven miles form Pittsburgh International Airport, killing all 126 passengers and five crew members. Much of what went into preparing the local plans was learned from that disaster, officials said.
If it happens there, it can happen here, said Jay A. Carter, Columbiana County EMA director. He said thousands of large planes fly over Columbiana and its neighboring counties every day of their way in and out of the Pittsburgh Airport.
"Anything from Chicago west is usually over Columbiana County flying into Pittsburgh," Carter said. "There is loads of traffic above us."
Airport spokesman Jeff Martinelli said there is an average of 1,147 planes taking off and landing at the airport each day, though statistics are not available to show how many of those fly over a particular county.
The air base did not have statistics to show how many planes took off or landed there last year, but said planes are constantly flying in and out. Some are planes assigned to the air base and headed for military missions, while others are from the other air bases making stops here, said Lt. Brent J. Davis, public affairs chief.