By Tahna Weston
The timely response from several emergency teams who were in position within 12 minutes of being notified of an emergency landing of an Amerijet cargo plane at VC Bird International Airport yesterday has come in for high praise.
Fire Chief, Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Vivian Parker told Observer that the Fire Department was alerted about the emergency about 10:36am through a call from the Antigua and Barbuda Airport Authority (ABAA).
The Fire Services quickly sprang into action and notified several agencies of the emergency landing at the VC Bird International Airport involving the Boeing 767 aircraft which had four persons onboard.
The aircraft reportedly left Miami for St Maarten; however, on approaching landing in the Dutch/French territory, it developed a problem.
The occupants then made requests to land in Antigua, which they safely did some 12 minutes later.
ACP Parker said for that incident a quick emergency operation centre was established at the airport, which involved the police, the fire brigade, the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) the Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force (ABDF) and the Red Cross.
“All those agencies were alerted. I alerted all those people and brought them together and had them converge on the scene just in case something serious were to happen. All these agencies are stakeholders in emergency operations,” he told Observer.
The aircraft had over 5,000 pounds of jet fuel on its approach to Antigua.
“So I did need to call them since that type of aircraft that landed with that amount of fuel. You are looking at a serious catastrophic event if something happened. So all of us came together and they did it quite well,” the fire chief said.
ACP Parker said he is very pleased with the response from all of the emergency stakeholders.
“They responded well, in real-time because once we got the information the aircraft was 12 minutes away and all these people responded in that time,” he said.
Parker explained that the reason why the aircraft had to turn back and head to Antigua for the emergency landing was because the airport runway in St Maarten was too short. He said if there was not enough length of space to allow the plane to slow down before coming to a complete stop, it could have created some serious problems.
He said the runway at VC Bird International Airport has a longer landing space which was better able to deal with this type of emergency.
Observer was unable to verify if the aircraft left the country yesterday.
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