Nobody wants to think about bad things happening, especially with Thanksgiving only weeks away and Vero about to embark on what we all hope will be a happy holiday season.
But with commercial air service finally about to resume here just over a month from now, the emergency landing at our airport two weeks ago of a corporate-owned Boeing 727 jet – the kind of large plane that once was the workhorse of the Boston-New York-Washington shuttle route – forces one to ask the question: Is Vero ready?
Are our emergency services ready to respond in the unlikely-but-unforeseeable event that something goes very, very wrong in our backyard?
They say they are.
They say they’re prepared to respond quickly to an emergency, and are capable of handling both the daunting challenge of extinguishing any fire and helping get passengers off a plane. And they say they will be even more prepared in a month’s time.
In fact, the Indian River County Fire Rescue Department’s specially trained Air Rescue and Fire Fighting (ARFF) team – based at Fire Station No. 3, located at the west end of the airport – conducts annual training exercises mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration.
And Assistant Fire Chief Brian Burkeen said the ARFF team, which mans the station on a 24/7 basis, will conduct another series of training exercises at the airport this week.
“We are prepared, and we’ve been prepared,” Burkeen said, adding that if a passenger jet makes an emergency landing, “we’re going to send everything we’ve got.”
Sheriff Deryl Loar echoed Burkeen’s remarks.
“God forbid something like that happens, but if it does, you’ll need every resource available, so it’ll be an all-hands-on-deck situation,” Loar said. “This county is unique in that our 911 center is on the Sheriff’s Office campus, and we have a combined dispatch that handles all Fire Rescue calls.
“Not only do we listen to each other’s calls, but the Emergency Operations Center is just across the street, so I’m confident we’ll be able to coordinate and mobilize whatever services we need to respond to any emergency at the airport.”
In addition, Loar said, the local emergency services have trained with similar agencies in adjacent counties in preparation for potential disasters at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral and the St. Lucie Nuclear Plant on South Hutchinson Island.
Those relationships – as well as the cooperation between the Indian River Medical Center, Sebastian River Medical Center and the trauma units at the Holmes Regional Medical Center in Melbourne and Lawnwood Regional Medical Center & Heart Institute in Fort Pierce – provide the training and additional support our local emergency services agencies might need in the wake of an airport emergency, Loar said.
In the meantime, local officials are planning to conduct multi-agency drills that simulate troubled-aircraft scenarios, such as emergency landings, hard landings and crashes. The training is expected to involve Vero Beach Airport Director Eric Menger and local Federal Aviation Administration air-traffic controllers, as well as the county’s two hospitals, Fire Rescue responders and law enforcement.
“The airport already meets the requirements for (commercial) aircraft,” Menger said, adding that jets account for 25 to 30 percent of the air traffic at Vero Beach Regional Airport. “We have the ARFF personnel and equipment on premises to handle an emergency of that type, just as we’ve had all along.
“The FAA has a specific (Part 139) certification that allows you to operate an airport that serves scheduled and unscheduled air-carrier aircraft with more than 30 seats,” he continued. “We had that certification 20 years ago, when we last had commercial flights here, and we’ve maintained it because of the high volume of our corporate-jet traffic.
“So if we have an emergency situation, we’ve got it covered.”
Indian River Medical Center spokesman Lewis Clark said the hospital also is prepared to respond to a passenger-jet crash at the airport – though he conceded such an incident might well require assistance from other medical facilities.
“We have a mass-casualty plan in place,” Clark said. “We work closely with Fire Rescue and emergency medical services and, once the situation is assessed, we react accordingly.
“Now, if you’re asking if we could handle 50 to 60 people arriving at our emergency room at the same time … No, we cannot,” he added. “But our hospital has a mutual-aid network.
“So depending on the severity of the situation, we have the ability to supplement our resources with other hospitals in the area and around the state.”
Burkeen said he could mobilize “five to seven helicopters,” as well as ambulances from Indian River Shores, St. Lucie County and Brevard County, to transport patients to other hospitals. If needed, he said he would summon private ambulance companies, which were used when IRMC’s air-conditioning system failed in September.
“We’d do whatever was necessary to respond to the emergency,” Burkeen said. “If something happens, we’ll be ready.”
