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LIIDLII KUE/FORT SIMPSON
Officials who were at the Fort Simpson airport exercise last week are praising the village's emergency response capabilities.

Volunteer firefighters Alex Campbell, left, and Scott Whitmore signal for water shortly after arriving at the scene of the mock airplane crash during the live, full-scale airport exercise in Fort Simpson on April 28. - Roxanna Thompson/NNSL photo

"Fort Simpson is really lucky to have the emergency response agencies it has," said Chucker Dewar, the operations safety and emergency planning officer for the Department of Transportation's airports division.

On April 28, a live, full-scale airport exercise was held at the Fort Simpson Airport. All 19 certified airports in the territory are required to have to have a live exercise once every four years, said Dewar.

The purpose of the exercise is to assess the response of agencies in the event of an airport accident. Multiple government and local agencies would respond if there was a real incident, he said.

"That takes a lot of co-ordination, that takes a lot of communication," said Dewar.

The Fort Simpson Volunteer Fire Department, RCMP, the Village of Fort Simpson, the Fort Simpson Health Centre, the airports division and the Community Aerodrome Radio Station (CARS) were among the agencies that participated in the exercise. All of the groups worked well together, said Dewar after the exercise had concluded.

"We saw some very fine work," he said.

The fire department got the crash victims to the health centre from the airport within an hour of receiving the call. The airport is 15 minutes away from the community. That is something they should be proud of, Dewar said.

The scenario for the exercise involved a plane that experienced mechanical difficulties while attempting to land at the airport. When the pilot declared an emergency, it activated emergency response procedures by the CARS operator, which included notifying local emergency services.

During the exercise, as in the case of an actual event, Scott McIntosh, the Fort Simpson airport manager, opened an emergency operations centre at the airport. The role of the centre is to support the other emergency response agencies and to communicate with government departments such as the Transportation Safety Board of Canada.

"It went really well," said McIntosh.

There was a good response by all of the local emergency agencies and each agency had good radio communication with each other, he said. This was McIntosh's second live exercise at the airport.

The exercise is the closest the agencies can get to a real accident without actually having one. It's much easier to go through a second time having had your previous experience, he said.

While McIntosh was co-ordinating from the airport, the Village of Fort Simpson also established its own emergency operations centre.

The purpose of the village's centre is to provide support and to concentrate on details that don't need to be looked after at the accident site, said Dewar.

Sebastien Goyer, the village's senior administrative officer, said he was very satisfied with the exercise. The exercise allowed the village to test its emergency responses before the flood period. Some deficiencies such as issues with the village's radio system, were identified and will be promptly addressed, he said.

Some of the village's actions during the exercise included securing an extra ambulance from a contractor and using staff to ensure emergency vehicles had priority on the street to the health centre. In the case of a larger scenario, the village would have declared a state of emergency so it could access further resources, Goyer said.

During the exercise, each agency had an evaluator watching and judging its performance. A final report that outlines areas in need of improvement, as well as strengths, will be distributed to each agency, Dewar said.

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