Macau International Airport held yearly fuel farm exercise: process deemed smooth with active participation from involved entities

To continually enhance the capacity of the relevant government bodies and the operators in handling emergencies of fuel farm fire in Macau International Airport, the “Fuel Farm Fire Exercise 2013” was carried out in the airport today (28 March 2013) simulating a fire incident taking place at the airport fuel farm and the fire fighting by the involved organizations in the emergency. The exercise lasted for half an hour and was deemed smooth.

The fire drill started at 14:45. The scenario was of a fire incident taking place in the top of a tank in the airport fuel farm due to static electricity. Nam Kwong Petroleum & Chemicals Co. Ltd., the fuel provider, immediately activated the safety systems according to their internal emergency plan and moved away the vehicles parked in the area. Simultaneously, they informed all concerned entities involved in the emergency in accordance with the Airport Emergency Plan. The airport fire fighting station delivered their trucks to the spot at once to stop the fire. Although there were no injuries, the commander-in-chief asked for additional support from the Fire Services Headquarters, considering the high critical degree of the incident area and ordered to evacuate the staff in the vicinity of the incident.

In the fire drill, the communication between all involved personnel, the delivery of fire fighting facilities to the spot, and the evacuation of staff were all carried out in a smooth manner. With the assessment by all the involved entities that there were no more potential threats, the exercise was concluded. The whole process went through half an hour, with the participation of 50 personnel from the Unitary Police, the Public Security Police Force, the Fire Services, the Civil Aviation Authority of Macao SAR, the Administration of Airports Ltd., Nam Kwong Petroleum & Chemicals Co. Ltd. and the Macau Security Company Ltd.

The Facilitation and Security Committee holds meetings in the beginning of every year to discuss the exercise plan for Macau International Airport for the year. The objective of doing exercises is to test and assess the effectiveness of the Airport Emergency Plan and the capacity of the participating entities on command and control, coordination, communication, resource allocation and so on when facing emergencies.

The other exercises which will be carried out this year include the full scale emergency exercise, the aviation security exercise and the heliport exercise.

The “Fuel Farm Fire Exercise 2013” was carried out in Macau International Airport on 28 March 2013 simulating a fire incident taking place at the airport fuel farm. The whole process was deemed smooth.