Burbank Airport Drill
HOLLYWOOD-BURBANK AIRPORT01An old MD-80 fuselage is trailered from airport to airport for safety exercises. The wings are gone but the seats and overhead lockers remain.
HOLLYWOOD-BURBANK AIRPORT02Volunteers act as victims, in this case of an engine explosion, complete with realistic makeup.
HOLLYWOOD-BURBANK AIRPORT03After the initial explosion, airport firefighters quickly tackled the blaze.
HOLLYWOOD-BURBANK AIRPORT04Medics tended to the wounded.
HOLLYWOOD-BURBANK AIRPORT05Everyone gets a colored triage tag looped around their neck with a string. Minor injuries are green, wounds that need immediate transport to the hospital are red. Pink means contaminated, either by a fuel spill, in this scenario, or by radiation in a “dirty bomb” attack. Black is a ticket to the morgue.
HOLLYWOOD-BURBANK AIRPORT06Modern commercial aviation has a tremendous safety record, but drills like this one help minimize the damage when things do go terribly wrong. They give firefighters, airport managers, public information officers, mental health professionals, and others the chance to act out the plans they've studied on paper.
HOLLYWOOD-BURBANK AIRPORT07By 11 am, things are winding down and the packed ambulances are pulling away. In total, 29 passengers were transported to the virtual hospital, 10 with no real injuries were bussed to a family reunification point, and 21 died. If the disaster were real, it would be uncommonly terrible.
HOLLYWOOD-BURBANK AIRPORT08Firefighters from the airport and nearby municipalities, Burbank, Glendale, and LA, all convened on the scene.
HOLLYWOOD-BURBANK AIRPORT09“We activate as much as we possibly can without shutting down the airport,” says Michael Crane, assistant manager for operations at Burbank Airport. (Passengers in the terminal and approaching pilots are warned there’s a drill going on.)
