On Sept. 21, several military aircraft crashed. Rescue crews from MacDill Air Force Base and local emergency and law enforcement agencies scrambled to reach victims, put out fires and make the area safe.
The disaster wasn't real, but part of a "field training exercise" simulating a "multiple aircraft accident scenario with mass casualties," according to Air Force Capt. Regina Gillis, spokeswoman for the 6th Air Mobility Wing, MacDill's host unit.
MacDill, local law enforcement, first responders and hospital officials, among others, took part in a "comprehensive review of procedures," Gillis said.
The goal, she said, was to ensure that the base and local agencies can "minimize hazards to life and prevent unnecessary damage or destruction of property in the event of an actual accident."
While there has never been an accident at the MacDill Airfest, which opens today, such things do happen.
The most recent air show disaster took place in Reno just five days before the MacDill exercise, when an experimental P-51 crashed into the stands, killing the pilot and 10 people on the ground, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
With 150,000 people expected to stream into MacDill for the two-day Airfest 2011, an event highlighted by the Air Force Thunderbirds precision flying team, having contingency plans is extremely important, according to the Air Force and Hillsborough County emergency management officials.
Because MacDill is an active Air Force base, there are already a number of plans in place to deal with an accident, Gillis said.
Airfest brings "an increased amount of contingency preparations and planning," she said, adding that the base's Installation Emergency Management Plan was reviewed and updated in September.
Like the Air Force, county officials regularly plan for disasters. County officials looked at how contingency plans for Airfest meshed with the existing mass casualty plan, said Holly Wade, spokeswoman for the county Office of Emergency Management.
"Obviously, if there were a disaster, injuries would occur," she said. "We looked at how many hospital beds would be available, where we should send folks based on their injuries, how many people we can send, not just in Hillsborough County, but regionally."
Complicating matters is that so many people will be on a secure military base, with access roads choked by traffic.
"It's one thing to deal with a stadium or convention center," said Wade. "It's a whole other thing to deal with a secure military base.
"Even though it's Airfest and the gates open and security is at much lower level, we have all seen how roads back up and how many people are involved," she said.
Even getting ambulances onto the base could be challenging, Wade said.
But even though there is a lot of emphasis on Airfest, emergency officials still have to deal with the usual problems, too.
"Airfest could go off absolutely fine, but we could have a horrible accident in the interchange," Wade said. "Any number of different things could occur. Just because it's Airfest doesn't mean the normal doesn't happen."
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