A base's worst nightmare

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Tim Beckham
  • 39th Air Base Wing Public Affairs
INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey --  One of a base's worst nightmares is responding to an aircraft crash. Imagine a plane getting ready to land on base, experiencing a malfunction and crashing off the end of the runway. When this happens there is a joint effort between American and Turkish responders that must go above and beyond to ensure the situation gets handled correctly.

Joint first responders from the fire department to security forces proceed to the crash site to ensure the hazardous area is contained.

"We would receive a call from the primary crash net giving us as much information as possible, then respond to the incident scene by the most direct route with all necessary airport rescue fire fighting vehicles," said Kenneth Williams, Incirlik Fire Department deputy fire chief. "Then we would perform firefighting and rescue operations in accordance with applicable program operating processes and training guidelines."

The 39th Operations Squadron also plays an important role in any flightline response.

"Base Ops plays a key role in ensuring expeditious response to any aircraft emergency," said Capt. Eric Eibe, 39th OS airfield operations flight commander. "Timely notification of an emergency situation is absolutely critical to ensuring the protection of life and resources."

Captain Eibe also said that once an emergency situation has been confirmed it starts a chain reaction.

"For any inbound aircraft that has declared an emergency, the Radar Approach Control will pass the information to the control tower to disseminate the emergency information," he said. "Once an emergency situation is determined to exist, or has occurred, the tower rings out the primary crash phone in order to immediately inform the fire department, medical, security forces, command post, and aircraft maintenance operations. This starts a sequence of events to include deployment of first responders and further notification of select base agencies by AM Ops over the secondary crash phone. Additional agencies are advised of the situation to include the weather flight. Knowing the weather conditions at the scene of an accident are vital when providing fire suppression and rescue support, particularly if hazardous materials are on board."

Even the base public affairs office works long hours when a military aircraft goes down.

"We have a person on scene with the disaster control group, one in battle staff as well as Airmen in our office, keeping USAFE, our local Turkish counterparts and the media aware of what's going on," said Staff Sgt. Oshawn Jefferson, 39th Air Base Wing Public Affairs office chief of internal information. "During an emergency, communication is the key to ensure team success in any emergency."