Mangalore: City Airport holds Mock Exercise to check Preparedness of Fire Brigade

By Robert D’Costa
Bellevision Media Network

Mangalore, 30 Apr 2014: An aircraft while landing at the city’s international airport caught fire and exploded here on Tuesday April 29 at about 4.00pm. 

 

There were about 67 passengers on the flight that crashed nearby the fencing. Out of which 35 passengers critically injured, 12 passengers suffered minor injuries, 14 passengers escaped unscathed and 6 passengers dead.  The injured were rushed to different hospitals in the city by ambulances.

 

The fire fighters who arrived in trucks of city’s fire brigade led by Airport Authority of India (AAI) pilot all-terrain truck managed to contain the fire at the air crash spot.  

 

The whole exercise was a mock drill in order to check the preparedness on containing the fire and rescue operation that was carried out in co-ordination with AAI, Dakshina Kannada district disaster management Committee and district administration, supported by paramedics of Father Muller Medical College Hospital, Yenepoya Hospital, district Wenlock Hospital, Primary Health Center – Bajpe. 

 

 

The city’s fire brigade chief H S Varada Rajan, airport director J T Radhakrishnan, air traffic controllers, Jet Airways station manager Gladwin Mascarenhas and others were present during the mock exercise.  

 

It may be recalled that an ill-fated Air India Express flight that arrived from Dubai was crashed on the gorge at Kenjar, a few meters from runway fencing at nearby new terminal building here on May 22 2012 at about 6.00am.  One-hundred-fifty-eight passengers were perished in the air-crash as rescue operations were hampered owing to tough terrain for the fire brigade trucks to reach the spot.  In order to improve the efficacy and familiarization of handling such disasters, the mock exercise was held at nearby the old airport terminal building.