PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — If a real plane crash had occurred during the early morning hours of Saturday, Aug. 11, at the Presque Isle International Airport, the City of Presque Isle would have released a statement saying that a United Airlines jet had crashed onto the airport runway shortly after 9:07 a.m. and that the surviving 30 out of 38 passengers had been transported to area hospitals.
But in this case, the “crash” was not real and simply a scenario created by a team of both city officials and emergency responders to help everyone act out how they would respond in such a situation.
“Everything is happening as though this situation was real,” Kim Smith, public information officer for the City of Presque Isle, said. “There would be a lot of standing around as we wait for updates regarding the injured passengers.”
Smith and Karen Gonya, TAMC communications manager, set up a room in the airport’s Fire and Rescue Building where they would update both media and community members about the situation through live announcements and written releases.
During the exercise, Smith announced that a “fire” had caused one of the jet’s engines to fail, forcing the pilot to make an emergency landing on the runway, and that eight “passengers” had died on impact. The “fire” had been contained and family and friends were sent to a designated area at Northern Maine Community College to be reunited with loved ones and assisted by American Red Cross volunteers.
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- Ambulance and airport crew members participate in mock emergency exercises near the Presque Isle International Airport on Saturday. (Melissa Lizotte)
Just outside the Fire and Rescue Building’s side exit, crews from the Presque Isle and Mapleton Fire Departments, Crown Ambulance, Aroostook County Emergency Management and Transportation Security Administration stood near the “crash site” and directed ambulance “traffic” in and out of the area as needed.
“In the event of a real emergency, we would assess how many patients The Aroostook Medical Center could handle and if we needed to transport some patients to Cary Medical Center, Houlton Regional Hospital or Northern Maine Medical Center,” Gonya said. “
The Federal Aviation Administration requires that Presque Isle International Airport conduct an emergency drill every two years to test their emergency response plans and evaluate strengths and areas in which they could improve upon. Saturday’s drill went even more smoothly than expected, according to Presque Isle Fire Chief Darrell White, and took place in a little more than an hour, about three hours less than crews had expected.
“If this were a real incident, we would all be here much longer and the fire department would have utilized mutual aid from as far away as Van Buren and Houlton, if not farther,” White said.
As in real life, members of the public were not allowed to go anywhere near the airport. The mock emergency did not affect flights arriving at or taking off from the airport, as the Fire and Rescue Building is located north of the main terminal.
