Tenerife Airport Disaster - Case Study Example

Air Disaster Running Head: Aircraft mishaps TENERIFE AIRPORT DISASTER Air Disaster 2 Abstract An ideal emergency or disaster response management program must have an Emergency Response Plan which consists of risk assessment, an emergency response team, procedures, good communication, training and drills program. It also has 4 essential components i.e. mitigation or prevention, preparedness, response and recovery. The Tenerife airport disaster which snuffed the lives of 583 people with a mere 61 survivors, making it the world's worst civil aviation disaster is the best example to study whether there was an efficient and effective emergency response management program and whether this contributed to the worsening of the tragedy. Introduction Air travel is undoubtedly the safest way to travel. This claim is best expressed by a statement of an aviation researcher at the University of Miami, Earl Wiener who stated that in USA alone "There are 15,000 to 20,000 takeoffs a day. Half a billion passengers a year, in a hostile environment, get to their destination safely and quickly" (Chandler, 1996,p.52). While we encounter almost daily news about land transportation mishaps and regularly hear news of ships, large or small, sinking in seas, air transportation mishaps come far and in between. Thus, it is the best preferred means to travel, especially involving long distances. Because of such growing transport demand, the number of aircraft in operation is constantly on the rise while bigger, behemoth aircrafts which are capable of transporting a large number of people are being built. Thus, when air accidents occur, we hear of many people perishing in such accidents. Air Crashes Despite the fact that modern airplanes are now designed to be as safe as possible and are now built with stronger materials with more powerful engines and at faster speeds and are much bigger and heavier and with improvement in its equipment and its operation that practically ensures safety, yet airplane crashes still occur (Grolier, 1994). In January 2010 alone, 2 airplanes crashed i.e. one involving the Ethiopian Airlines that crashed in Beirut, Lebanon and killing all 90 people on board (Walker, 2010) and the other one involving the Alaska Central Air Disaster 3 Express cargo airplane that crashed off Sand Point, Alaska and snuffing the lives of the 2 pilots aboard (Anchorage Daily News, 2010). It seems that airplane mishaps is inevitable and that people concerned have no option but prepare a good emergency response plan and management to mitigate the disaster and rescue whatever can be rescued. Statistics show that from 1954 to 2004, 1402 crashes had occurred and that 25,664 lives had perished in the process (1001crash.com). It is also a known fact that more than 50% of all accidents occur during the final approach and landing stages. But what is considered more dangerous is the climbing stage of the aircraft, where fatal accidents may occur. It is possible that airplane defects may go undetected as the plane leaves the gate but such defect will become apparent when the plane takes off the ground and begins climbing. When the pilots realize that such defect exists, they inevitably call to perform an IFTB or In Flight Turn Back. But the aircraft has already lost some of its capabilities and chances are, disaster may occur. Emergency Response Efforts The most fundamental measure to avert airplane mishaps is to understand the causes of airplane crashes and to refuse to travel through air transportation when any of such causes looms to probably happen. According to authors Duffey and Saull (2003), the main root cause of airplane mishaps is pilot error due to inexperience or lack of training on procedures and this makes up 65% of the root causes of such accidents. If anyone abhors the probability of being involved in such mishaps, one simply must not ride in airplanes or airlines piloted by inexperienced pilots. Other stated causes are reduced visibility or bad weather, air traffic control, plane mechanical failure or aircraft failure and miscellaneous reasons such as Air Disaster 4 unauthorized intrusions onto the runway of equipment, other aircraft or alien objects (Duffey & Saull, 2003). Despite all precautions, airplane accidents still happen. Thus, proper authorities are left with no recourse but mitigate the loss to person or property in such mishaps by establishing an efficacious and comprehensive emergency response management program. It is inevitable that such plan can have loopholes because there are many possible peripheral influences that cannot be predicted. But essentially, the program must cover topics such as risk assessment; the formation of an emergency response team; the development of procedures and plans to be taken when such emergencies occur; ensuring an efficient communication system that would dovetail the rescue efforts of all bureaus and organizations involved in the emergency response; the administration of an emergency response training which includes maintenance of life safety systems and emergency supplies and evaluation drills; and lastly, the holding of regular drills and testing that simulate conditions in an actual airplane mishaps (Avery & Soo, 2003). The hereinabove plan of action to mitigate loss of life or property is incomplete without a clear program that establishes procedures to be undertaken before, during and after such accidents. This program must address all types of air disasters "through a dynamic process that includes four essential components: mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery" (Kildow, 2004). Steps undertaken to mitigate and prepare for such accidents before they actually happen include the redesigning of airplanes that would provide a safer passenger cabin such as the Burnelli design; the installing of equipment to aircrafts and airports such as wind-shear detection system that can detect sudden surges in the wind at varying altitudes; the putting in place of Air Disaster 5 detection devices in the airplanes themselves such as cockpit warning systems and Doppler radar detection systems for wind shear; the use of antimisting fuel, a special fuel which would not explode on impact; the outfitting of explosion-resistant tanks and the installation of military-type fuel cells (Ethell, 1985). When the hereinabove are installed and yet mishaps still occur, emergency mitigation management moves to actual emergency response. But prior to setting up of such air crash response, several factors must be considered. First, most airplane crashes occur within the 5 mile radius of the airport. This is because as we have declared, most such crashes occur during takeoff and landing of the airplane. As such, airport operations emergency planning and off-airport emergency planning especially water-based operations planning for airports adjacent to oceans must be instituted and fortified. Another factor is that most disaster passengers die not from the explosion itself but from the trauma and smoke inhalation due to fire that ensues from the explosion and that these passengers die "within 4.5 minutes of emergency being declared and probably within 2 minutes of smoke and flames entering the fuselage" and the source of this trauma comes from any of 5 major causes i.e. " explosive decompression, crush and entrapment, passenger restraint systems, burn and thermal exposure and events associated with evacuation" (Ciottone, 2006,pp.829,831). Thus, the rescue crew should act speedily, complete with ambulances and medical personnel ready to treat passengers suffering from multiple trauma or burns or both. Personnel protected by aircraft flammable materials should be ready to move and evacuate casualties and if aircraft crew is able to successfully exit the passengers from the aircraft, rescue personnel should take into consideration human impact injury patterns. Air Disaster 6 "Explosive ordnance disposal personnel should target items such as pressurized bottles, hydraulic reservoirs, and canopy detonation cord to secure the scene and prevent further injury" (Ciottone, 2006,p.835). But one rule must always be followed i.e. act with dispatch for time is of the essence. This presumes that there is quick communication from personnel detecting the mishap and the rescue personnel. As practically all of these air mishaps, fire is always involved. Thus, taking a pivotal role in the emergency response efforts are the firefighters with their fire trucks replete with all modern firefighting equipment. The whole firefighting crew must have undergone intensive aircraft rescue firefighting training following the standards set by the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Fire Protection Association (Barr & Eversole, 2003). Both agencies also require that all airports must have an airport disaster plan with a well-coordinated airport incident management system or IMS. The latter has allowed the airport fire department to directly communicate with airport operations and to monitor emergency information broadcast from air traffic control. IMS also require that firefighters must recognize what hazards are present in the crashed aircraft, where these hazards are located in the aircraft and how to cope with them. As part of the coping is the use of "dual agents" to extinguish hydrocarbon fuel fires. This new concept is a combination of dry chemical agents that provide three-dimensional fire control and foam agents with their inherent cooling effects (Barr & Eversole, 2003). A classic example of how an efficient, well-coordinated airport incident management system or IMS which was fully ready for an eventual air mishap and which had intensively trained rescue personnel and firefighters not to mention an efficient communication system was Air Disaster 7 able to save all passengers aboard an aircraft that crashed was the Sioux City, Iowa mid-air crash in 1989. Here, the experienced pilots were able to steer the damaged aircraft back to the emergency-prepared Sioux City airport where intensively trained ground rescue personnel speedily worked to rescue the plane's passengers and crew while mitigating loss to property (Waugh, 2000). The Tenerife Airport Disaster If the Sioux City, Iowa airport crash was a testament to what a well-coordinated, efficient and ultra-prepared emergency response management system can do to save lives and properties, the Tenerife airport disaster was on the other hand, a testament to utter failure to save numerous lives i.e. 583 lives because of deficiencies and inadequacy of an emergency response management system. This air disaster will probably go down in history as one of the world's worst civil aviation disaster and probably one of the best examples for a thorough analysis why emergency response efforts fail to mitigate loss of lives and properties. Author James Cornell calls the March 27, 1977 air tragedy at the Los Rodeos Airport in Santa Cruz, Tenerife Island, Canary Islands as 'the worst air disaster imaginable" which "happened under the most unimaginable circumstances" (Cornell, 1982). The manner that had happened was almost freakish as the two 747 Jumbo jets i.e. from PanAm and KLM which also happened to be fully packed with passengers, collided not in mid-air but while both were on the ground taxiing along a straight runway in the airport. Any rescue personnel would find the situations close to being unmanageable and difficult to control. First, the airport is located in a hollow between Air Disaster 8 mountains and its high altitude i.e.2073 feet above sea level makes it susceptible to perpetual smog and thus making visibility a perennial problem (Underwood, 2003). On that fateful day, clouds instead of smog, moved toward the 2 planes at 12 knots and completely enveloped the whole airport, making it almost impossible to ascertain any activity and thus practically making everybody including the rescuers frenetically move while blindfolded. In fact, the air traffic controllers on account of the clouds failed to see the collision and thus failed to communicate with the ground rescue personnel that a collision occurred. When the firefighters finally realized that a collision indeed happened, still they couldn't ascertain where the fire was and when they did attempt to rescue the burning KLM plane, they failed to realize that another plane nearby i.e. PanAm was also afire because they just couldn't see anything due to the density of the clouds. Secondly, the airport seemed to have had no emergency management system that was ready to deal with the situation and the situation was so unique because all incoming airplanes due to land at Las Palmas Airport, the major airport in nearby Gran Canaria Island, were diverted to the minor airport in Tenerife because of a bomb explosion in the Las Palmas airport. The Tenerife airport being a minor airport had only a limited taxi space which cannot provide much elbow room for free movements of many planes (Weick, 2001). The rescue crew which appeared to have been untrained to deal with that particular situation and almost certainly had never undergone drills simulating such situation, were simply powerless to do anything splendid on that fateful day. Thus, they failed to rescue 583 people, saving only 61 lives. The rescue crew including the firefighters, the airport managers and the airport traffic controllers were simply and Air Disaster 9 completely taken by surprise as communication among all of them were cut off momentarily. In fact, it was miscommunication and misunderstanding among the rescuers, the air traffic controllers and the pilots in both KLM and PanAm that made rescue operations an utter failure. The KLM pilots spoke Dutch, the PanAm pilots can communicate only in English, the rescue crew and the firefighters spoke Spanish and can hardly communicate in either English or Dutch while the air traffic controllers were forced to communicate in English, a second language that they were not so familiar. This Tower of Babel scenario spelt tragedy as all parties concerned cannot agree on the meaning of the words "we are now at takeoff" which were the words uttered by the KLM pilot. The air traffic controllers interpreted it to mean "we are now at takeoff position" when it was meant to be that KLM was about to takeoff. Another misunderstanding was caused when the KLM crew asked for two clearances in one transmission and the air controllers responded by saying "after takeoff" which was obviously misinterpreted by the KLM as permission to leave when it was not meant to be so. More misunderstanding ensued, when upon the explosion in the KLM plane, the air controllers at the tower never thought there was collision but that they thought all awhile that the same terrorists who sowed terror in the Las Palmas airport bombed the fuel tanks next to the tower. Because the air traffic controllers were confident that KLM merely stood by and because the enveloping clouds made it impossible for them to know that a collision and resulting fire occurred, they never bothered to request the rescue teams to come over for help and thus the tragedy (Weick, 2001). This tragedy taught the utmost importance of coordination and communication in emergency or disaster response efforts. Air Disaster 10 Another cause for the failure of rescue efforts was that the airport emergency operations simply failed in mitigation and preparedness, which are the first two essential components of an emergency management program. Mitigation and preparedness just were obviously absent so when the incident occurred, the rescue crew was caught with their hands tied down. According to Weick, " controllers at Tenerife were also under pressure because they were shorthanded, they did not often handle 747s, they had no ground radar, the centerline lights on the runway were not operating, they were working in English (a less familiar second language), and their normal routines for routing planes on a takeoff and landing were disrupted because they had planes parked in areas they would normally use to execute these routines (Weick, 2001,p.129). It also was found out that not only the ground rescue team was deemed to be deficient in training but also the KLM crew whose pilots were unfamiliar with route flying and thus had "deficiency of knowledge and skill" (Weick, 2001,p.134). It is a rule in emergency or disaster response management that rescue crew must act with dispatch and speed. But in this Tenerife air tragedy, the rescuers miserably failed as it took them more than 20 minutes to realize that a disaster had occurred and when they moved, their energies were concentrated on the KLM plane failing to realize that there were survivors coming out through holes in the fuselage structure of the PanAm aircraft and who desperately waited for rescue. The problem was that the rescuers were nowhere to be found while the aircraft was fast disintegrating, "throwing engine parts at high speed that killed at least one flight attendant who escaped the burning flame". Most of the survivors escaped death by jumping to the ground on their own accord (wapedia.mobi). Airport Disaster 11 There were also allegations that airport management was not only guilty of being unprepared for the disaster of that magnitude, had no disaster mitigation program and had a weak and inefficient emergency response program but that it was lacking of leadership, indecision and imprudence as it allowed a great number of large aircrafts to overcrowd the small airport and thus resulting to "disruption of the normal use of taxiways" and placing "additional pressure on all parties, KLM, PanAm, and the controller". What is worse is that KLM accused the airport management of administrative inefficiency as it alleged that during that fateful day, "the Spanish control tower crew had been listening to a football game on the radio and may have been distracted". KLM based this on sounds from the CVR (wapedia.mobi). Conclusion In fairness to the ground rescue crew of the Los Rodeos Airport in Tenerife, Canary Islands, they had done their best to pull out dead bodies from the wreckage. But still, 583 deaths from the disaster with only 61 survivors is enough evidence that somehow the airport's emergency or disaster response management program is inefficient, debilitated and ineffective. Although, it was claimed that the fault can be ascribed to inclement weather that produced smog and clouds that fully enveloped the whole airport and to pilot error of the KLM crew, yet evidences also showed that there is a flawed Emergency Response Plan. There might be an emergency response team but this team had inadequate training and most possibly had no drills simulating the collision of two planes in its airport. There also is obviously miscommunication between the air controllers, the rescuers including the firefighters and the airport management, good communication being basic to the Plan. There was obviously absence or deficiency in at least the three essential components of the Emergency Response Plan i.e., mitigation, preparedness and response. REFERENCES Anchorage Daily News (Jan. 26,2010). Salvors pull wreckage, victims from sea near Sand Poin Avery, W.H. & Soo, J. (2003). Emergency/disaster guidelines and procedures for employees. CCH Canadian Limited. Barr, R.C., & Eversole, J. (2003). PennWell Books. Chandler, J.G. (1996). Why airplanes crash. Polpular Science, Vol. 248, No. 4, 52. Ciottone, G.R. (2006). Disaster medicine. Elsevier Health Sciences. Cornell, J. (1982). The great international disaster book. Scribner. Duffey, R.B., & Saull, J.W. (2003). Know the risk: learning from errors and accidents . Butterworth-Heinemann. Ethell, J. (Dec.1985). Fear of flying. Popular Mechanics, Vol. 162, No. 12. Kildow, B.A. (2004). Front desk security and safety. AMACOM Division, American Management Association. Grolier (1994). The new book of knowledge. Grolier. 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