Emergency Exercise at Suvarnabhumi Airport

[Richard Barrow]

Today we were invited over to Suvarnabhumi Airport to watch an Emergency Exercise involving a natural disaster. All members of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) must have plans for emergency situations. They have to conduct a partial emergency exercise at least once a year and a full scale emergency exercise once every two years. Today we went to watch a partial emergency exercise that involved a lightning strike against ground crew standing next to an aircraft.

These first shots are of Panrit who took all these pictures for www.Paknam.com and for Paknam Post newspaper. I shot the video which I will upload shortly. It wasn't too dramatic as it went on for a while. But, hopefully you will find our pictures and videos interesting. I am going through them all now and will start posting soon.



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Weekly Online News Magazine for Samut Prakan Province

[Richard Barrow]

I am going to post here some of Panrit's pictures from yesterday media event at the airport. Below is a link for my report and also the exciting video!

Full report: www.paknam.com/latest-news/emergency-exercise-at-suvarnabhumi-airport.html
Video: www.paknam.com/videos/emergency-exercise-at-suvarnabhumi.html

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Weekly Online News Magazine for Samut Prakan Province

[Richard Barrow]

An adverse weather warning was sent out by telephone and walkie talkies. Everyone on the airfield were warned of potential lightning strikes. A "follow me" vehicle was also dispatched to broadcast the warning.



Due to a communication problem, the ground crew at parking bay A6 weren't warned and tragedy struck when lightning hit the aircraft.



The duty supervisor realized that one of his ground crew had been hit by lightning and quickly called it in.



An ambulance, that was already on standby, was then sent to the scene.

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Weekly Online News Magazine for Samut Prakan Province

[Richard Barrow]

The ambulance with a doctor arrived and the victim was then taken away to a local hospital.



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Weekly Online News Magazine for Samut Prakan Province

[Richard Barrow]

A short while later, another victim of the lightning strike was found on the other side of the aircraft.



An ambulance from a local hospital was called out and arrived about ten minutes later.



A doctor examined the victim and he was then loaded onto the second ambulance.



Panrit was able to sneak closer to take this second batch of photos which is why they are much better. Everyone else was obediently standing far away. To be honest it was a bit boring as we had to wait for a long time for them to react and call the ambulance and then for it to arrive. It was all done in real time. You can take a look at my video which condenses one hour down to about 6 minutes.

www.paknam.com/videos/emergency-exercise-at-suvarnabhumi.html

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Weekly Online News Magazine for Samut Prakan Province