A day after reports of a major air disaster sounded alarm bells across Nairobi and abroad, aviation officials conceded on Thursday they may have injected too much realism into an emergency drill, while others defended duping the media.
Conflicting accounts from airport authorities spread mayhem in news rooms, where journalists agonised between believing sources who swore blind that an airliner had actually crashed at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) and those who said —
correctly as it turned out — that a drill was under way.
Such is the speed of today’s global news machine that the truth dawned too late for many media houses, and TV viewers across the world were for some time under the impression that a passenger jet had been involved in a fatal accident.
Major airlines had been given advance warning of the drill — which involved a scenario complete with a casualty figure, including the possible death of an ”unnamed prominent Kenyan” — but appeared to be under instructions not to let on.
”There seemed to be an organised disinformation stream, a script had been written,” reflected Naim Yaseen, the news editor on duty at the indpendent Nation television station.
According to those organising the drill, the media, which sent crews scrambling to the airport, had an important, if unwitting, role to play in testing the response and coordination of emergency services.
”We wanted to treat the dummy as live so you tell them
(journalists) immediately on the onset so they scramble like everybody else,” said Major Muange Musau of the National Disaster Operations Centre.
”The media was part of it, they covered it extensively,” he said.
”We were practising the harmonisation of disaster teams within the country and the city in particular,” he said, explaining that the exercise involved firefighters, defence personnel, police and
medical workers believing that they were dealing with a real emergency.
”It went very well compared to previous exercises,” he said.
While airports across the world regularly conduct such drills, it is most unusual for the media to be duped as it was in the Kenyan scenario.
Musau conceded that the exercise might have taken realism too far.
”You must practice and at the same time not cause undue anxiety… The balance must be struck,” he said, explaining that the scenario’s detailed procedure called for the press to be told of the exercise only 35 minutes after its 7:00 pm (1600 GMT) start.
JKIA Public Relations Manager Selina Otieno defended the way the media was used.
”At the end of the exercise, normally someone from public relations, or our managing director does a briefing and tells the press about the exercise and how it went,” she told AFP.
The press ”was briefed the moment they reached the airport and told it was an exercise… we don’t want to cause panic.” she added.
Many officials whom journalists initially encountered at the scene, which was swarming with emergency vehicles including helicopters, were either also unwitting participants, or still playing their roles in the scenario.
”We were trying to control the prospect of someone leaking out the emergency drill before it actually took off… to maintain utmost secrecy,” she said.
”If we tell you (journalists) in advance, it might defeat the purpose,” echoed Kenya Airports Authority representative Dominic Kabiru. – Sapa-AFP