The drill.....a plane attempts to land without landing gear and crashes........

The mock plane crash scenario involved an aircraft with 17 passengers.

The pilot experienced Hydraulic failure in the landing gear....resulting in a crash landing.

Adding to the disaster drill was spilled fuel on the runway area., and a fire

The Victoria Fire Department, as well as several Volunteer Fire Departments were part of this exercise as well as the Victoria County Fire Marshall and Emergency Management Coordinator.

"Most important is passenger safety. That's the primary concern of all responding agencies. And then the second is going to be site preservation and evidence preservation. So the National Transportation Safety Board has something to work with as to what went wrong." said Jeb Lacey, Emergency Management Coordinator for Victoria County

Airport Manager Larry Blackwell commented "This was the first drill that we had utilizing the control tower, a notification point. It was very important to see how the notification from the control tower went.">

During the mock disaster plane crash, a triage unit is set on location to tend to the injured.

Then they are transported to safety...away from the airport runway....

Used in the exercise is an airport rescue fire fighting vehicle. Commonly known as a crash truck, it has unique abilities in responding to such disasters.

“It is designed to put a tremendous amount of water and foam on a burning aircraft. And to allow the passengers to evacuate the plane." says Victoria County Fire Marshal Ronald Pray

A final assessment is held, with all the first responders........ Looking at how the disaster drill was handled.....how the passengers were evacuated, the fire on the runway and safety concerns..

Gary a. Aguilar, transportation security inspector with the Corpus Christi International Airport was an observer of the exercise, who is a member of us department of homeland security transportation administration.

"Some of the improvement areas are definitely on our communication. Making sure that everybody, every responding agency had all the adequate communication equipment to understand everything that is going on. So that no conversation goes on to someone that is party to the response." says Jeb Lacey

Overall the suggestion for many of the responders in the disaster drill, was that they have this exercise more often....to* get* a better* handle* should* a *real* disaster occur, at the Airport.