FAA tests Albany International Airport in emergency preparedness drill

COLONIE, N.Y. ( NEWS10 ) – The Albany International Airport held an emergency training drill on Friday. The exercise took place for three days beginning on Thursday and is mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration every three years.

Friday’s drill involved a makeshift plane crash at the airport with a 727 airplane. Over a hundred actors volunteered to play crash victims and partake in the drill. Steve Smith, the Director of Communications at the Albany International Airport, said the goal drill is to test the emergency plan of first responders, and the coordination efforts at the airport.

“So it’s an FAA requirement that we assess our emergency plan every three years,” Smith said. “So its a multijurisdictional response. We’re going to have volunteers here, acting as victims in an incident and will be working with local hospitals and other partners to assess our response and how we would respond in the event that there were a real emergency.”

Actors in the plane crash were taken off board, and based on their injuries, emergency crews acted accordingly. Those injuries ranged from minor bruises to life threatening conditions. Chris Menge, the Deputy Fire Chief of the Albany Airport Fire Department, said that there are other aspects of the drill that does not happen at the crash site.

“We’re also going to work on reconstitution plans with the airlines and how they reunite families after an event,” Menge said. “And we are going to spend time today working on our mass casualties, exercise, triaging patients, transporting patients to and from the airport to the hospital.”

The drill went on for nearly five hours on Friday, and part three will take place on Saturday. After the drill concluded, those involved addresses what went right and what went wrong and shared their feedback on the exercise.

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