Simulated crash tests airport emergency plan

A SIMULATION of a fatal plane crash occurred at Ballarat Airport on Tuesday morning to test the facility’s emergency plan.

The exercise was a collaboration between major emergency service agencies and university students, and involved the temporary closure of the newly extended airport runway.

The crash scenario was set up to seem it had been caused by a medical emergency on board a plane carrying 12 passengers, and that this had resulted in several fatalities, and serious injuries.

“The idea is to test the airport plans in relation to response to an emergency, and familiarising emergency services personnel with the process involved,” Peter Anderson, Victoria Police Sergeant and municipal emergency response coordinator said.

“The aircraft on final approach has crash landed at the start of the runway and skidded to a halt.”

The emergency exercise was prepared under the authority of the Ballarat Municipal Emergency Management Planning Committee and designed to test the effectiveness of emergency management arrangements at the airport.

“It gives us an opportunity to practice what we need to do in a safe environment,” Mr Anderson said.

“Hopefully the learnings we take from today will feed into planning for future events.

“There are limits to the size of aircraft that can use Ballarat Airport and certainly any emergency that we would likely experience here at the airport, we have satisfactory resources to safely deal with that.”

The simulation was a partnership between the City of Ballarat, Victoria Police, the Country Fire Authority, Fire Rescue Victoria, the State Emergency Service, Ambulance Victoria, Victoria University and the Department of Health.