Emergency fire exercise was held at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport.

This exercise was held with 50 passenger dummies and crew at around 11 o’clock on Sunday.

A Bell-212 model search and rescue helicopter along with two fire engines of the airport fire department, an ambulance, an air force fire engine, a medical team and rescue personnel arrived immediately after the aircraft was set on fire in the exercise.

Apart from this, a fire engine of fire service and civil defense and an ambulance were also present there.

A combined effort of the whole team was given a trial to airlift a seriously injured dummy passenger to a military hospital. 19 dummy passengers injured in the accident were sent to Dhaka Medical College and Kurmitola General Hospital and Jahanara Clinic by ambulance.

In the event, Babychak Chairman Air Vice Marshal. Mufidur Rahman said, ‘IKAW will be audited in Bangladesh this year. This audit will look at how we carry out such activities in detail. Apart from that, how we are doing it in practice, whether we are rehearsing properly or not, the participants will see how the sections of the unit are operating. Today’s exercise at that venue was very timely and very well presented.’

He further said, ‘In every such exercise we try to highlight our mistakes. We review our systems. This is how we move forward. Such exercises can play a catalytic role in our economy. And we need skills to play that role.

The on-screen commander of the exercise was Group Captain Kamrul Islam, Executive Director of Hazrat Shahjalal Airport.

He said, “The purpose of today’s exercise is to check the fire fighting system of the aircraft due to accident at the airport by coordination between different organizations.”

As per International Civil Aviation Authority (ICAO) regulations, such fire drills are required to be conducted at all international airports every two years. This exercise was organized at Shahjalal International Airport.

The main objective of this exercise is to test the effectiveness of all agencies in an emergency, to test the usefulness of equipment including fire engines and to improve the ability to deal with emergencies in aviation at the national level.