MIDLAND, Texas —
A disaster exercise was performed at the Midland International Air & Space Port on Thursday morning. The exercise was a simulated plane crash.
The disaster exercise is mandated by the FAA and is something that every airport like Midland’s needs to do every couple years.
“So every airport that serves commercial air carriers is required every three years to do an exercise like this to test their airport emergency plan so we can learn what works well, what doesn't work well, errors we may need to improve upon and allow a lot of the first responders in the airports, mutual aid partners who may not experience emergencies at an airport to gain some experience," said Nicholas Krakovec, deputy director of airports for the City of Midland. "So should unfortunately a real-world event happen, everybody is better prepared to respond.”
However, it’s not just Midland first responders that would be involved with a situation of this scale. There needs to be cohesive collaboration with responders from Odessa as well.
“So the larger the event, obviously it's just more departments from not only the City of Midland, but Midland County, Ector County, the City of Odessa, that may not normally interact with the airport very often are now challenged to be able to communicate with each other, test our systems and try to make sure everything's working the best way it possibly can,” Krakovec said.
Though grading something like this seems pretty straightforward, it’s more complex than people might think.
“So gauging results on these can be a little challenging. It's not, you know your standard test where it’s a pass-fail type of event," Krakovec said. "There are several hazard specific sections of an airport's airport emergency plan that we try to test or simulate to the best we can. But we're trying to see is what we have in writing a realistic expectation and is it efficient?”