Kenyan authorities simulated a major plane crash at Nairobi’s main airport on Thursday, causing confusion after international reports that a serious accident had occurred.
The exercise — plans for which had been announced last month — was aimed at giving emergency workers experience in dealing with a large-scale disaster, but officials gave initial conflicting reports about the alleged accident.
The drill involved the simulated crash of a humanitarian aircraft carrying 80 people from Kisangani in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to Nairobi, but some police and airport officials were not told of its actual nature.
”We have just been told that an Echo flight from Kisangani with 80 passengers on board has crashed,” Christine Awando, a flight information officer at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) immediately after the exercise began.
At the same time, however, other more senior officials were telling AFP that the ”crash” was in fact a well-planned training exercise, with ambulances and emergency workers responding as if it were real.
”It is a drill and I am currently on the site,” said Michael Okwiri, the spokesperson for exercise participant Kenya Airways, as international television news networks carried ”breaking news” of the accident.
”It is a drill, but we planned it in a way to appear that it was real so that it could help us improve our weaknesses,” an official with Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) told AFP.
KAA chairperson George Muhoho defended the exercise, saying it was part of Kenya’s efforts to conform with global aviation demands to improve airport safety.
”The drill is an international requirement that all airports should hold the rescue operations regularly,” he told reporters at the scene where swarms of emergency workers and rescue vehicles, including three helicopters, hovered.
”This is to check the state of preparedness should there be a major accident,” Muhoho said, as the choppers blew about smoke that billowed from tires set alight to give the ”accident scene” a further touch of reality.
”The response was superb,” he added.
Muhoho also said false information had been distributed to make the disaster appear real.
”To the foreign media, they can correct [their stories] and say it was an emergency drill,” he said. AFP did not report a crash.
Officials said all airlines that operate from the airport as well as other government units had been given advance warning of the drill.
However, police confirmation that a state of emergency had been declared at the airport spurred several international media to report that an actual crash had taken place.
In August 2002, KAA carried out a similar exercise, announcing a major air disaster at the airport involving a British Airways jumbo jet with hundreds of passengers, including an ”unnamed prominent Kenyan”, and causing similar confusion.
Then, authorities came under fire for injecting too much realism into the emergency drill, while others defended duping the media. — Sapa-AFP