Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

editorial:

Firefighters’ stellar performance shows value of preparation, comforts all of us

The passengers aboard the taxiing British Airways Flight 2276 had just heard from the flight attendants — maybe for the umpteenth time in their flying experience — what to do in the event of an emergency, and those sitting in the emergency exit rows promised to be up to the task of helping people evacuate, if necessary. And of course, it rarely is. At the airport’s fire station, near Terminal One’s C gates and near where both pairs of parallel runways intersect, 10 specially trained firefighters were finishing their daily chores, including equipment and medical supply checks, and now mostly chillin’ and anticipating of a dinner of pork chops and potatoes.

The wide-body, twin-aisle Boeing 777, laden with 30,000 gallons of jet fuel, began speeding down the runway for its nine-hour flight to London when the left engine erupted in flames. The pilot, who was within a week of retiring, and his copilot initiated emergency braking to abort the takeoff. The aircraft was traveling about 100 mph. “Mayday! Mayday! Speedbird 2276 requesting fire services,” came the pilot’s call at 4:13 p.m. Tuesday. And the immediate response: “Heavy fire services are on the way.”

At the firehouse, the alert tone blared over loudspeakers, and a voice intoned “Alert 3...Alert 3,” meaning an aircraft emergency. The garage doors opened automatically and within 45 seconds, firefighters aboard their oversized, foam-spewing trucks were heading to the aircraft, arriving as the last of the 157 passengers and 13 crew members were still evacuating via the aircraft’s emergency chutes. Firefighters from other stations were on their way, too. By 4:18 p.m., the fire — the most serious emergency to occur at McCarran International Airport — was extinguished.

There were no fatalities; 27 people with minor injuries related to sliding down the emergency chutes were transported to area hospitals and released.

The incident speaks to the professionalism of both the British Airways flight crew and the Clark County firefighters who train for such emergencies but rarely encounter them. McCarran International Airport, the ninth-busiest in the country, already is respected for its efficiencies. And now no one — not those of us who live here, nor the 43 million people who fly in and out of McCarran every year — can doubt the excellence of the airport-based firefighters.

Theirs is a life that can catapult from a calm, daily firehouse routine to the adrenaline rush of rolling to an airplane that’s on fire and needing to be at the top of their game. Duane Kann, who is chairman of the Aircraft Rescue & Fire Fighting Working Group, an international, nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting excellence in airport firefighting, talks about going from zero to 60 in one second.

“You’re cooking dinner or maybe on the phone talking to your wife or girlfriend, or doing some training or maintenance, and you hear the tone and you’ve got a plane on fire,” he says. “It’s hard to explain what that does to your mind, your adrenaline, to go from a state of rest to full-speed ahead. It’s a significant challenge in the fire service. Police deal with that same situation, to manage the initial rush of adrenaline that surges through you.

“You get in this very large vehicle, a specialized piece of equipment with different joysticks to operate the turrets with different (firefighting) agents, and you’ve got two radios going — one with the incident commander and other units, telling them what you’ve got and where you’re going, and what the incident looks like so the others know, and you’re using the other radio to talk to the air-traffic control tower for clearance to drive out there. You need their approval because you don’t know what other aircraft may be out there, landing or taxiing.

“As you approach, you’ve got to look for people evacuating the aircraft, determine where they’re coming from and going to, so you can find the safe path to access the fire. People tend to follow each other, like ants, versus just wandering around. So you look for that trail of people.

“You’ve also got to know where the fire is so you know how to approach it, and for the other vehicles to approach it from different directions, and maybe one on the other side of the aircraft. Wind is a huge factor in deciding where to put your vehicle because foam can carry 200 feet unless you’re facing into the wind.

“You are making sure all the passengers are protected and that if the fire expands, there’s a vehicle in the right position to take action against it.”

On Tuesday, the fire was extinguished within minutes, no one was injured in the process, and now the firefighters understand why they undergo so much training.

“We like to say, ‘Firefighters don’t train until they get it right. We train until we can’t get it wrong,”” Kann says. “You’ve trained so many times, it becomes second nature. The talking to and listening to two different radios, looking at the windsocks, looking at the smoke plume to see if fuel is involved and where it’s coming from, and whether the fire is coming from the interior or exterior.“

Kann’s assessment of how the Clark County firefighters performed Tuesday? “From what I’ve seen on the videos, they did a tremendously good job. It was a very good response; they protected the passengers and they got the fire under control very quickly, before it could burn through the fuselage and impact the people still on board.”

The Federal Aviation Administration requires full-scale firefighting exercises every three years.

“But it’s not a real, live event,” Kann notes. “What McCarran just went through was the real thing. They’ll be at a higher level because they’ve had a real incident. Now they can go, ‘A-ha, that’s why we train.”

When Kann’s organization has its next big convention of airport firefighters, he says, it’s a sure bet the folks from Las Vegas will be there to share their story.

And it’s a good one — one we can be proud of, and one that should bring confidence to visitors that we’ve got our act together.

Join the Discussion:

Check this out for a full explanation of our conversion to the LiveFyre commenting system and instructions on how to sign up for an account.

Full comments policy