Miri Airport conducts hour-long emergency response drill

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AIRPORT DRILL: JPAM personnel wheel a ‘victim’ into a waiting ambulance during the emergency response exercise.

MIRI: Malaysia Airports organised an hour-long emergency response exercise involving various parties who coordinated their skills and expertise to enhance the airport’s preparedness in handling crisis.

A command post was set up at the scene of the crash, led by the on-scene commander for the Search and Rescue Exercise (Sarex), chief inspector Dunsmore Intih, who is attached to Miri Police Headquarters.

“We will conduct a post-mortem back at Miri Airport to check on the details and performances of the exercise,” said Dunsmore who briefed participants upon completion of the drill recently.

Dunsmore was pleased with the successful joint collaboration by various parties from Malaysia Airports, Fire and Rescue Department (Bomba), Civil Defence Department (JPAM), MRC, Malaysian Royal Police (PDRM) and Miri Hospital.

The drill also involved 31 volunteers from the Malaysian Red Crescent (MRC) led by MRC treasurer Charles Soo in a simulation of rescue work coordinated to handle an enacted scene of a crash involving ATR72 belonging to Kenyalang Air.

Soo explained that the ‘victims’ were classed into Priority 1 for those with serious life-threatening injuries (Red Zone), Priority 2 for those with major but not life-threatening injuries (Yellow Zone), Priority 3 for others with light injuries (Green Zone) and casualties or deaths in the Gray or White Zone.

In the drill, there was one casualty, three ‘victims’ in the Red Zone, four in the Yellow and seven in Green.

There was only a minor hiccup when the wheel of a Malaysia Airport rescue truck was temporarily stuck in mud, but was able to extricate itself later.

The first arrival was an ambulance with four personnel, followed by other arrivals, with the first evacuation of an injured victim to hospital about 14 minutes later, and stand-down declared at 11am.

The young volunteers acted as the 15 ‘victims’ of the crash who were on board the flight.

One of the MRC officers known only as Vincent said the volunteers are mostly adults from the voluntary aid detachments (VAD), who have left school after Form 5 and are working or waiting to pursue further studies.