DLH Airport and Local Emergency Agencies Undergo Water Landing Training
DULUTH, Minn. – They don’t happen very often, but emergencies airplane landings are possible almost anywhere.
The Duluth International Airport and other emergency responders conducted a training exercise at Rice’s Point to practice effectively handling different emergency landing scenarios.
Every three years the Federal Aviation Administration requires airports practice a hypothetical emergency response.
Duluth Airport’s focus this year is to address possible water landing situations.
Multiple emergency agencies, including the Duluth Fire Department and St. Louis County Emergency Response team, took part in the training exercise.
Each team did a mock rescue out of the St. Louis Bay.
The agencies also coordinated to test procedures already in place.
A St. Louis County Emergency responder tells us these trainings are an opportunity to iron out any details before an emergency situation actually happen.
“Now we will sit back say okay, what went right and what went wrong. How do we fix them? So we do move forward from those things and not just identify them and they go unfixed,” said St. Louis County Emergency Response Coordinator Dewey Johnson.
Many months go into planning an exercise this big.
But the Executive Director of the Duluth Airport Authority gives praise to all the emergency responders for their dedication to prepare for this type of emergency incident.
“I’d stack our first responders up against anybody in the country because they are top notch. They are professional. They are a joy to work with. I have confidence if we had to do this for real that things would go as well as they could,” said Tom Werner.
The exercise also tested the lines of communication among all agencies.
While some responders were out on the water others were at the Duluth Airport creating a mock family assistance center used in emergency scenarios.
In 2016, the Duluth airport also conducted active shooter training with the various emergency agencies
