Lessons from Jomo Kenyatta airport fire

By Mark Odeke

Fired gutted the international arrivals unit of Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in the early hours of Wednesday. The cause of fire was not established immediately. Kenya Airport Authority had to cancel all flights and temporarily close the Airport as the fire response team, the military and G4S battled to put out the flames. No casualties were reported.

JKIA is the busiest airport in East Africa and a major hub for aviation activity in the region according to Center for Aviation. The Airport is served by 50 scheduled Airlines with direct connections to Europe, Middle East, Asia and Africa.

The fire is a major setback to the Airports ambitious plan of becoming the hub for African aviation.

With major construction going on to increase its handling capacity, currently at 2.5million passengers annually and 250,000 tonnes of cargo in the same period to nine million passengers by the end of 2013, Kenya Airport Authority will have to contend with losses from the fire that has cost millions of shillings.

JKIA may be Kenya's flagship gateway; it may not detract from the blooming relevance of other key airports in the country. While Wilson International Airport is one of the busiest airports in East and Central Africa with international aircraft movement at 10%, it is also a hub for general aviation in the region implying JKIA may be down but Kenyan travelers have options.

Even as we sympathise with our neighbours for the unfortunate occurrence, there are lessons for us to learn from this fire.

Put Entebbe International Airport in the same position and we would probably have to close the Airport for business for a very long time. My reasoning is simple.

1.   Unlike JKIA, EBB is far much smaller with international arrivals and departures using the same unit, a fire that huge would destroy all sections at once since they sit adjacent to each other on the same building.

2.   JKIA was redirecting traffic for arrivals to Moi International in Mombasa, which has international arrivals and daily flights. For Moi, it is business as usual though they have to realign their schedules to accommodate traffic rerouted from JKIA. The other alternative is Eldoret International Airport which was completed in 1997 mainly to handle cargo and has grown to be the leading cargo handle attracting international carriers to the Airport.

The other alternative is the recently improved Kisumu International Airport which has the capacity to receive large aircraft such as Boeing 767 or Airbus 300 and 310. The new airport can comfortably handle an estimated 700 persons per hour and translating to at least two million traffic per year.

3.   If we had a similar incident or an emergency crisis at EBB, our closest option by international standards for emergency landing is Gulu Airport with the second longest runway covering 3100 meters (10200ft) and Soroti Airport with a run way of 1860 meters (6100ft). Our best option in this case would be the latter.

The geographical advantage Soroti has over Gulu is the distance from EBB – Soroti – Kampala which is 249 Kilometers, Kampala - Gulu is 338 kilometers. Both runways do not have scheduled flights except military and training flights that use both Airports.

Both runways are 30 ft. wide and can support a craft the size of Boeing 737 without damage to the surface. However, they wouldn’t accommodate consistent traffic over time and crafts with larger passenger capacity and wing length the size of an Airbus A340-200 with an average wing span of over 60.30m, length 59.39m, height 16.74m. Wing area 363.1m2 wouldn’t use our alternative options of Soroti and Gulu Airports.

4.   Soroti and Gulu do not have passenger terminals in the event of emergency landing or alternative use since they currently have no scheduled flights. Soroti Airport was originally built as a training school for the British Overseas Airways Corporation to train their pilots in tropical flying techniques. It was later used by the East African Flying Academy to train pilots from the East African Community.

Today, the airport is home to Soroti Flying School and has smaller aircrafts including a Cessna 310 and military aircrafts with no known passenger transit flights.

The process of readying Soroti or Gulu as an alternative would be rather difficult and any hasty arrivals would have to be accommodated through the dilapidated dormitories at the facility and an emergency immigration centre would have to be set up immediately. Such a procedure would compromise our ability to maintain security for all inbound traffic.

5.   I was impressed by the way the interior ministry of Kenya handled the situation from onset, they actively tweeted updates to all its contacts and the media behaved cautiously reporting positively and not looking for faults in the middle of the crisis.

They played a supporting role, highlighting developments from the interior ministry and NDOC, informing the public of the closure of the Airport, suspension of flights and cautioning the public to stay away from the Airport until advised. One tweet read, UPDATE: 0900hrs JKIA remains closed indefinitely.

Fire at International Arrivals terminal has been contained. The Interior Ministry of Kenya has demonstrated the power of social media by constantly closing the communication gap.

6.   Social media is still looked at as a tool for the youth to express their extraneous opinions by government technocrats in Kampala, the JKIA incident would not have been handled better, if it were at EBB. CCA has no known social media platforms let alone a following to communicate too in the event of such an accident.

Their Emergency response procedure would be limited to using conventional means for communication which is Radio, TV AND Newspapers even in this age of digital communication.

*******

As a country, we have a lot to learn and change, our emergency response procedure have to be widened to cover worst possible scenarios.

CCA and the Airport Authorities have been carrying out drills in preparation for possible accidents; the scope now needs to get wider than what has been in the initial drill. Our ERP has to assume the worst possible scenario to readily prepare us.

Upgrading our facilities of EBB and other smaller airports of Soroti, Gulu, and Nakasongola to international standards are paramount, if we are to face up to any challenge.

Expanding the runways, enlarging the terminals at EBB and creating room for passenger terminals for the other Airports will enhance our readiness to take on such situations.

One of the key lessons from JKIA is our ability to embrace social media and maintaining open communication lines. This is the only way every Ugandan can offer a hand and keep informed on the latest developments.

The closest place for our authorities to start is keeping track of the incidents in Kenya – Interiorke

The writer is an account manager with Hill & Knowlton Strategies Uganda