Key takeaways from latest Entebbe Airport emergency simulation

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Imagine this...

A Sky Airlines plane with 95 passengers and five crew members on board has crashed at Entebbe International Airport not long after being cleared to land.

It has crashed at the airport's perimeter fence and caught fire.

The daytime incident has set in motion an emergency situation involving airport firefighters and other rescue agencies called in to save lives.

Twenty-five people are dead, and 13 of the survivors are seriously injured.

After a hectic two-hour joint effort, sixty-two people on board have been successfully rescued without injury.

The critically injured have been rushed to different hospitals in Entebbe and Kampala.

This actually happened on Friday (May 23) — but only as an exercise — to test Entebbe Airport's readiness to respond to a potentially actual emergency involving a crash similar to that in the simulation involving 'Sky Airlines'.

The full scale emergency exercise assumed that over 90 passengers were involved in an aircraft crash at Entebbe airport on Friday. (Credit: Julius Luwemba)

This emergency simulation is a mandatory requirement by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) that must be conducted every two years.

Organised by the Uganda Civil Aviation Authority (UCAA), Entebbe Airport had last conducted such a full-scale emergency exercise in 2023.

The latest exercise involved over 600 participants from 50 agencies, including airport stakeholders, medical service providers, security agencies, public, and private firefighting companies.

So what lessons were picked from this simulation?

While the exercise was aimed at testing inter-agency coordination and evaluating emergency medical services, some participants expressed concerns over the ability of Uganda's healthcare system to handle emergency exercises.

"First of all, the firefighters should be equipped with basic training in handling emergency occurrences such as a plane crash," said Micheal Mpunge, a youth leader under the Red Cross Entebbe branch.

"We have observed them just gushing water and foam at the 'survivors' in a way that causes more pain than the would-be rescue."

Dativah Nuwashaba, the Red Cross manager of the Entebbe branch, observed that the triage areas across several hospitals where the 'critically injured casualties' were rushed did not have enough respondents hence becoming "dumping grounds" for the critically injured.

Members of the Red Cross flanked by other emergency partners trying to offer first aid to the critically injured casualties during an aeroplane crash.

"We had cases that turned from yellow to black not as a result of the crash itself, but instead due to the poor response and limited resources by the responders and healthcare facilities."

Racheal Namuli, another observer, noted that several roads that lead to the nearby hospitals and healthcare centres are in "a horrible state", which may exacerbate any situation in case of an emergency.

"For example, the murrum road that leads to Kisubi Hospital is in a deplorable state, not to mention the Kigungu Road which is adjacent to Entebbe Airport and can be used as an emergency exit in case of a crash," she said.

Fred Bamwesigye, the UCAA director general, said that ever since such emergency exercises started to be carried out, valuable feedback has been collected from different stakeholders as points of reference and correction.

He noted though that most of such information remains internal, to be addressed by respective government ministries, agencies and departments.

"But overall, the exercise has been very successful," said Bamwesigye.

L-R; Emmanuel Barungi the general manager for Entebbe airport, Fred Bamwesigye the UCAA director general and Eng Ayub Sooma the director airports and aviation security. (Credit: Julius Luwemba)

Emmanuel Barungi, the general manager for Entebbe Airport, said such emergency drills are not for UCAA alone.

"They involve different stakeholders, and we use these exercises to gauge the situation even in hospitals."

Barungi further explained that all government ministries have severally been engaged, pointing out grey areas that need to be addressed.

Eng. Ayub Sooma, the director for airports and aviation security, underscored the importance of conducting emergency exercises.

He said the 2023 simulation involved a 'bomb threat' and a safety-related scenario that simulated an aircraft veering off the runway on touchdown and catching fire.

At Entebbe, most of the emergency exercises are carried out on the second runway 12/30, which has less traffic.

"So, all the scheduled flights managed to set off or arrived on time because the flights continued to use 17/35," said Sooma.