August 19, 1999 -- Ottawa, ON

Good morning Ladies and Gentlemen.

My name is Bob Perkins, and I am the Assistant Canada Air Safety Chairman for the Air Line Pilots Association International.

I don't think I'm going to bore you with technical stuff this morning. How many litres of water or foam a fire truck can hold or how fast it can apply it, is not important to you as a passenger. You don't need to be concerned about the top speed of the truck, or whether it is equipped with infra-red radar, or night vision equipment. Quite simply, if you are in an aircraft accident, the only thing you really want to know is, 'How much time before help gets here??'

Time. That is what I would like to talk to you about. Just what is time? Time is what we humans use to understand how long things take to happen. We measure time in units of years, months and days. Hours, minutes and seconds. We time everything we do from running races to cooking your eggs for breakfast.

In aviation, we time things as well. We time our approaches, so that we know exactly where we are. We time our flights so that you, the passenger, can know when you will arrive at your destination. But this is not the sort of time I want to speak about today. I would like to talk about the time involved in an aircraft fire.

Aircraft fires are very special animals. Very much different than structural building fires, they almost invariably involve a high concentration of humans, the passengers, in various states of consciousness and experiencing extremes of trauma. Some are completely lucid and mobile, some are comatose and unresponsive. Of course, there may be many that lie somewhere between these two extremes. But the one thing they have in common is that they are all in a confined space, some trapped by a failed aircraft structure of some sort, a seat or a bulkhead, and all are in close proximity to a large quantity of extremely flammable aviation fuel and cabin materials that will give off toxic fumes when ignited. The time between the actual crash and the time the passengers are removed from this dangerous situation is of life critical importance.

I'm going to give you some details now, I'm sorry, but I just can't help it. The modern aircraft hull can withstand an external fire for about ninety seconds. After that, the integrity of the hull, most probably the windows initially, will be lost, fire and smoke will enter the cabin and the environment inside quickly becomes deadly. On the other hand, the aircraft you all ride in have to be certified for evacuation in that same ninety seconds. Well, that sounds pretty good, you say. The interior should remain survivable for the time it's supposed to take us to get out. Unfortunately, real evacuations are seldom accomplished in ninety seconds. Confusion and disbelief, thick smoke, toxic fumes, injuries, blocked aisles and exits all add to the time it takes for you and I to get out.

In 1995, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada published a study of 21 real evacuations of large, passenger carrying, Canadian registered aircraft that occurred between 1978 and 1991. These were not tests. These evacuations involved 2035 passengers and 139 crew members. These events resulted in 91 fatalities and 78 serious injuries. Some 36 fatalities and 8 serious injuries occurred during the evacuation process. All of the evacuations were on land and of the 21 events examined, at least 14 took more than 90 seconds. I would like to quote some excerpts from the TSBC report on the Canadian Airlines 737 accident at Calgary in March of 1984. They paint a far more graphic picture than I can.

"Shortly after the evacuation commenced, fire melted windows along the left side of the aircraft. When the windows melted through, heat and smoke entered the aircraft, and the cabin environment quickly deteriorated. Substantial quantities of smoke also entered through the right over-wing exit and right rear service door.

Those passengers who had been seated beside the windows nearest the fire experienced some singeing of hair and clothing. Smoke obscured visibility almost totally during the latter stages of the evacuation.

Smoke conditions were worse in the aft section of the cabin. Passengers who exited via the rear exit reported that they were unable to see the exit and were required to follow the person ahead to locate it. By the time most had reached this exit, the smoke had lowered to about knee height. The bottom portion of the door and the slide were all that was visible. The passenger who was the last one to exit via the over-wing exit reported he had to drop to his knees to breathe fresh air before he was able to reach the exit. Only when he neared the exit, did it become visible through the smoke. (A84H0003)"

Yes, time is critical.

But as soon as we can get to the exit, we're saved. We'll be alright because right outside the aircraft, there are firemen, and fire trucks and help. But guess what? The fire trucks are not here yet. They are not required to get here for another ninety seconds! Then not even all the fire trucks have to be here in that time. Current regulations state that only half of the vehicles need to arrive to the midpoint of the farthest runway within three minutes of the alarm. They are not going to be able to help you get out in the first ninety seconds. They won't be able to fight the fire or the smoke yet. Hell, you probably can't even see them coming yet. Three minutes to the midpoint of the runway. I'd like to show you this slide of where accidents happen. The vast majority of the accident points are at or near the runway ends. Not the midpoints. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) recommends that fire vehicles should respond within three minutes and preferably within two minutes to any point on the operational runway. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) recommends response within two minutes. Let me tell you how Canada shapes up. At the 28 airports that are required to provide any fire protection service, the three minute to the midpoint rule is in effect. At virtually all other airports, and there are some 250 other airports that are being served by passenger carrying aircraft, there are currently no rules, and response times can be up to 30 minutes or longer. Thirty minutes. Think about that for a few seconds. Now, see what a fourteen minute response time looks like.

This accident happened in Quincy, Illinois in 1996. The two aircraft, yes, there are two aircraft in the picture, a United Express commuter aircraft carrying 12 souls and a charter aircraft with two crew on board collided at the intersection of the runways, one landing and one taking off. Everyone on board both aircraft survived the impact. There was no on-site fire fighting service at Quincy airport. Witnesses had enough time to race to the aircraft to try and help, but they had no equipment and the forces of the collision jammed the doors and exits. A fire started and all fourteen persons on board perished. Fourteen minutes after the crash, help arrived—fourteen minutes too late. The National Transportation Safety Board concluded in its report of this accident,

"If on-airport aircraft rescue and fire fighting equipment protection had been required for this operation at Quincy Airport, lives might have been saved."

They went on to further state:

" Although some communities may lack adequate funds to provide aircraft rescue and fire fighting protection for small airports served by commuter airlines, commuter airline passengers deserve the same degree of protection from postcrash fires as air carrier passengers on aircraft with more than 30 passenger seats."

Although slightly different in their classification of aircraft in the United States, the intent is clear. There should be no second class passengers when it comes to safety. The same holds true for Canada. When you buy a ticket on an airline, you deserve well trained pilots, safe, well maintained aircraft, and adequate protection if something does go wrong. It should not matter if the airline chooses to operate your flight with a smaller aircraft, you still deserve one level of safety.

Of course, the response time issue is only one aspect of airport rescue and fire fighting that we should be concerned about. A vast majority of Canada's airports that receive commercial passenger service have absolutely no on-site aircraft fire fighting protection. Responders who may come from community based, volunteer fire departments, have neither the specialized training, nor the proper equipment to adequately fight an aircraft fire, even if they were able to respond in a timely fashion.

Staffing levels at airports that do have on-site fire fighting services are generally at the minimum required by regulation, in most cases, one firefighter per vehicle, and in many cases, only one fire fighter, period. There is, currently, no requirement to provide any "rescue" component to the aircraft fire fighting service. In other words, the fire fighter's job is to provide you with a fire free egress route from the aircraft. He is not required to assist with passenger evacuation or extrication. The evacuation process is entirely up to you and the crew of the aircraft. Kinda makes you want to pay more attention to the before take-off safety briefing doesn't it?

In this country, at the present time, there is definitely not "one level of safety". Currently, Canada does not meet ICAO Standards and Recommended Practices in a number of areas relating to fire fighting. Canada does not meet NFPA recommendations. Canada must be made to adopt as policy, either of these achievable, recognized, standards, and they must be applied wherever airline operations are in effect.

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