October 31, 2008	Friday	Ziqa'ad 1, 1429

KARACHI, Oct 30: Mismanagement and flaws marked the annual airport emergency exercise conducted by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) at the Karachi airport on Thursday to assess the response time of all relevant organisations in the event of an emergency.

Besides the CAA staff, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), Airport Security Force (ASF), ambulances, doctors and paramedics, firefighters and a number of volunteers took part in the exercise, which began with the mock emergency landing of a PIA aircraft carrying 187 passengers at an isolated place at the airport.

It was the first setback to all the participants that the exercise started three hours beyond its scheduled time of 9am and doctors and paramedics, annoyed by the delay, threatened to boycott the event. The CAA blamed the delay on the PIA as its aircraft arrived late.

Surprisingly, none of the CAA officials concerned was aware of the exact number of the participating personnel, volunteers, ambulances or fire-tenders.

The whole exercise was conducted in the absence of an air ambulance. The response to the emergency also appeared to be slow as the CAA took more than 35 minutes to evacuate the 187 passengers, most of them injured, from the aircraft.

As soon as the aircraft landed at the airport and a fuel storage tank caught fire close to the runway, fire tenders were called in. The fire-fighters moved swiftly and extinguish the fire within no time. In the meantime, the aircraft crew lay the emergency parachute slide and started evacuating unhurt passengers, including women and children. Interestingly, the first batch of unhurt passengers touched the ground before any of the ambulances could make it. Moments later, dozens of ambulances, equipped with first aid essentials, rushed to the scene. Following them was the motorised ladder, which was attached to the second exit of the aircraft. Volunteers dashed into the plane and evacuated the injured passengers.

Some of the injured persons were given immediate medical treatment by a team of doctors and paramedics and then all of them were sent to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre and other hospitals.

The exercise was conducted in the presence of “umpires” who were supposed to monitor performance of the personnel and volunteers involved. “Since there is no air ambulance available to the rescuers, chances of seriously injured passengers’ survival is very grim,” one of the umpires observed.

The media was not informed about the number of casualties in the mock exercise and there was no way to determine whether the exercise was successful or not. It is learnt that the findings of the umpires will be treated as “classified”.

However, talking to newsmen, CAA deputy director-general AVM Sajid Habib said that the exercise was conducted to assess response time in case of emergency and it was organised in accordance with the parameters set by the International Civil Aviation Organisation.

He maintained that the ICAO did not suggest any time bar for the evacuation operation but it should be completed in the minimum possible time. He said that the CAA did not test any new equipment during the current exercise.