Gatwick Airport and the Local Authority Fire Service - Some Facts

The discussion on how West Sussex County Council cuts to the fire and rescue service have affected the response to emergencies at Gatwick Airport has thrown up some worrying misconceptions. Not least from County Councillors and, apparently, some fire service officers. This seems to revolve around unrealistic expectations of the airport’s fire and rescue service. Irresponsibly there are those that claim they can deal with any major incident on their own, so let’s look at the facts.

The requirement on the airport operator comes from the Civil Aviation Authority’s ‘CAP 168’, Licensing of Aerodromes, which is based on the International Civil Aviation Organization’s agreed guidance. That says the airport fire service is provided to, “create and maintain survivable conditions, to provide egress routes for occupants and to initiate the rescue of those occupants unable to make their escape without direct aid.”

You will note that for rescue it only requires them to “initiate” rescue. They go on to say that “the saving of those occupants unable to make their escape without direct aid may be a long and arduous task”. They also make clear that on occasions this will involve the use of specialized equipment and personnel not part of the airport fire service. Something that was well illustrated by the Kegworth crash that required over 100 local authority firefighters and 22 fire engines.

That is why there are several references in CAP 168 to “Local Authority Fire Services”. The CAA does not require airports to provide resources to fully deal with crashes, just to provide the immediate response. It even reminds airport operators that, “At all incidents it should be remembered that the Local Authority Fire Service has statutory obligations to fulfil.” Something that West Sussex County Council has tried to ignore.

The emphasis in CAP 168 is on an airport fire service that can arrive quickly and extinguish any fire that results from a crash. The number of vehicles and personnel required are determined by that objective. In some cases that will be sufficient to allow all survivors to escape unaided, but where there is significant damage, then rapid reinforcement of the airport fire service will be essential.

There is no requirement for the airport to have the sort of heavy duty rescue equipment that is carried on the West Sussex Heavy Rescue Tenders (HRT). That is why the failure to ensure that Crawley’s HRT attends warnings of aircraft in trouble is so worrying. Made worse by the fact that, when an alert is received, all the personnel from Crawley are sent on their standard fire engines, which leaves the HRT with no crew. So, if there is a crash, another HRT will have to travel at least 35 miles to the airport.

It also needs to be remembered that there is a busy railway line at the end of the runway. The potential for an aircraft to hit one or more commuter trains is ever present. There could be many hundreds of casualties as a result, yet WSCC’s cuts culture is deemed more important than the survival of passengers and crew in a crash at Gatwick. The reduction in the response to the most serious warning, “Aircraft Accident Imminent”, from 10 to just 6 fire engines is wholly unjustified.

Gatwick Airport, for the most part, meet their obligations under CAP 168. The main concern is that they may not have adjusted their emergency plan to take account of both the cuts and WSCC’s dreadful failure to properly crew their remaining fire engines. With part time crewed fire engines often being unavailable, resources will have to travel much further and take far too long to arrive.

The removal of the HRT and other special vehicles from the response to alerts that aircraft are in trouble flies in the face of proper risk assessment. West Sussex send an Aerial Ladder Platform from Horsham or Worthing to warnings of aircraft in trouble, just in case the aircraft is an A380. That is fair enough, but to not send the HRT that would be essential for a serious crash involving any aircraft suggests a total lack of logic when carrying out risk assessments, or a complete lack of understanding of aircraft crashes.

A Gatwick Airport spokesperson is reported to have said, "Gatwick has its own on-airport fire service that is fully equipped and resourced to deal with major incidents." A spokesperson who clearly has no idea of CAP 168, of the potential scale of an aircraft crash, or of the level of resources at the airport. No doubt WSCC will also soon provide false, unsubstantiated reassurance to the public with yet more ‘spin’.

Gatwick Airport – a critical consideration

West Sussex County Council will be debating expansion at Gatwick Airport next week. The content of a letter sent to all County Councillors is shown below:

"There appears to have been an important omission in the debate regarding a possible second runway at Gatwick Airport. That omission concerns consideration of the ability of hospitals, the emergency services, local authorities etc. to cope with an aircraft accident, or other major incident at the Airport.

I believe that the Council should insist on a second runway only being permitted if additional funding is given to those services that have to respond to major incidents at the airport. This is just as important as the infrastructure to support the airport. That funding could come from the airport operator or the Government, but to proceed without it would be reckless. 

It is quite clear that the ambulance service and hospitals are struggling to cope with winter pressures, so their potential to also cope with hundreds of casualties from an air crash must be in serious doubt. The Police have also suffered staffing cuts that affect their ability to deal with major emergencies. The ability of WSCC Social Care to provide support to uninjured survivors and relatives of the injured or deceased is another vital service that has been affected by budget cuts. 

The latest aircraft using Gatwick include the Airbus A380, versions of which carry over 550 passengers, with versions carrying 900 passengers being developed. When you consider that the aircraft involved in the Kegworth air crash in 1989 was only carrying 118 passengers, you get an idea of the significantly greater demand on local services if a larger aircraft crashes at Gatwick. At Kegworth 82 people were seriously injured and it took over seven hours to free them all from the wreckage. The local authority fire service needed 22 fire engines and over 100 firefighters at the incident.

It should also be borne in mind that the Civil Aviation Authority say that planning should consider more than one aircraft being involved in an accident, and the surroundings of the Airport should also be taken in to account. With a busy commuter line at the end of the runway, an aircraft collision with a crowded commuter train must also be considered. Casualties could run in to the thousands.

More specifically for West Sussex County Council, cuts and crewing difficulties have made the fire and rescue service much less able to cope than in previous years. The emergency landing at Gatwick Airport at the end of December showed that, instead of resources increasing to cope with increased risk, they have actually been reduced. The time taken to get resources to the airport has increased significantly, as they have to be sent from stations much further away. The proposed 2015-16 cuts will make this even worse.

When aircraft carried fewer passengers, WSFRS were able to get the full response to the airport by sending fire engines from stations no further away than Horsham. However, at the December incident fewer fire engines had to come from as far away as Bognor Regis, Shoreham and Worthing, with some taking well over an hour to arrive. With the potential for several hundred trapped and injured casualties, that is just not acceptable.

It should also be of concern to Councillors that the pre-planned response has been reduced. A public inquiry would not accept that an emergency service, given notice of a potential crash, did not use the time to assemble sufficient resources to deal with a crash. The current response would have been inadequate for smaller aircraft, so it is wholly inadequate for today’s aircraft.

Please note that the Airport Fire Service depend heavily on support from West Sussex and Surrey Fire & Rescue Services. The Airport Fire Service is only required to provide a full response to crashed aircraft within the airport boundary, and a reduced response to crashed aircraft very near to the airport. They have no responsibility for building fires, chemical incidents, road or rail crashes on or near the airport. They, and the rescue work at an air crash, are a statutory duty of West Sussex County Council.

I would urge you and your colleagues to properly consider this aspect before deciding on your recommendation regarding expansion at the Airport.