By BECKY KISER
Hays Post
The wind was blowing a steady 27 mph from the southwest and the temperature was already 82 degrees at the Hays Regional Airport Monday morning as the Hays Fire Department underwent its first group training since April.
"That's Kansas," quipped Tim Detrixhe, the HFD lieutenant assigned to B shift.
The scenario was a plane crash fire, with specialized training equipment and instructors from the University of Missouri Extension Fire and Rescue Training Institute in connection with the University of Kansas Fire and Rescue Training Institute.
The practical portion of the HFD annual exercise in aircraft rescue and firefighting had been postponed since April because of restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Also participating in this morning's training were firefighters from Dodge City and Salina.
The hands-on live burn with an aircraft prop experience is a yearly requirement of the Federal Aviation Administration, according to Detrixhe.
"These trainers travel all over the country, teaching airport firefighting. So if a plane were to have an incident and crash, the local responders — like us — have some practice putting out such a fire," Detrixhe said.
Three teams worked together to control the situation.
The first team handled the simulated fuel spill fire.
"They're working on controlling fuel that's spilled on the ground after the plane incident. That fuel spreads across the ground and gets exponentially worse," Detrixhe explained.
Nearby was the safety backup team.
"If something goes bad, they're going to jump into action and help out. They're called the RID team — the Rapid Intervention Team."
The RID was also responsible for keeping the roaring flames from reaching the fire hoses strung out from a fire hydrant just off the tarmac.
The third team worked inside the mock jet fuselage, doing fire suppression and rescue of a trapped victim, portrayed by a life-size dummy.
The firefighters also turned off switches for air and nitrogen bodies, fuel tanks and batteries. The cockpit was set up to replicate the layout of the SkyWest jet planes that fly in and out of the Hays Regional Airport once a day.
"We actually get specific training the planes that fly in and out of Hays to know where those switches are and turn that stuff off.
"The last thing we want to have happen is a jet engine that's still on when the pilots may have become incapacitated," Detrixhe said. "We're trained to go in there and manipulate the controls in the cockpit to shut them off."
Normally, airport firefighters will use foam spray on a jet engine fuel fire. But the foam is quite expensive, according to Detrixhe, so during the exercises water is used on the propane fuel fires.
There are two trucks based at the airport fire station, Engine 5 and the larger Engine 6.
