Heathrow's Annual Emergency Exercise

---

Large scale event is a civil aviation requirement

Last night, six emergency services from around the Heathrow area were in action for Heathrow’s annual emergency exercise.

This year a plane’s fuselage, engine and wing tips were brought in to simulate the wreckage of a crashed plane at Yeoman Aggregates, next to the Colnbrook Logistics Centre.

The exercise included 100 volunteers acting as passengers on the crashed flight.

They were attended to by the police, ambulance and fire services for ‘injuries’ of varying severity and a small group of specially recruited volunteers were cut free from the plane by fire services.

The Yeoman Aggregates site was transformed into the ‘crash site’ over 3 days.

A full sized BAe146 fuselage was moved onto the site including seats, suitcases and aircraft escape slide to add as much realism as possible. In addition, wing tips and an engine were used as props and the fire service, in consultation with the environment agency, prepared small areas where controlled fires could be lit on the evening.

Colin Wood, Heathrow’s Airside Operations Director said: “The winter conditions, off airport location and the fact the exercise happened at night set the emergency services a challenging task and all teams reacted exactly as they would in reality; with professionalism and speed. The exercise went very well and I would like to add a special thank you to all the volunteers who spared their evening to help.”

The large scale event takes place annually and is a requirement of the Civil Aviation Authority, although this year is the first time an exercise has taken place outside of the airfield. The chosen location was in close proximity to the M25 and M4 junction and required close partnership with the Highways Agency to ensure that traffic flowed fluidly throughout.

Dec 3rd, 2009