HANAMAULU BAY — Scott Higbee, lieutenant commander with the United States Coast Guard, stands before 35 Kapaa High School juniors and seniors who are serving as “victims” on a simulated airline crash Friday morning at Ahukini Landing.
“Flight 123 is going down in Ahunkini Bay, that was the report,” Higbee tells the students with the flurry of activity buzzing over the airwaves on his handheld radio. The students are there as part of their health academy class at Kapaa High.
“So the tower is calling 911 right now and we’re simulating that and that is activating the fire department, police department, EMS, all the people who would be coming down here quickly,” Higbee tells them.
Not long after Higbee uttered those words — helicopters, fire engines, ambulances, and the Coast Guard mobilized to the bay under perfect conditions with a slight breeze.
Kara Kitamura, the health academy teacher at Kapaa High, briefs her students about what the first responders will be checking for when the drills begin.
“What does ‘R’ stand for,”
Kitamura asks her students, as they respond respiration. “What are they checking? Your breathing. What does perfusion stand for? Blood.”
Higbee and the Coast Guard were on Kauai to participate in the interagency operation, the first of its kind in state history, alongside the Kauai Fire Department, American Medical Response ambulance, Ocean Safety, Wilcox Medical Center healthcare personnel and the 35 students from Kapaa High, in addition to Kitamura.
“The Airport Rescue Firefighting is treating this in real time like it was an actual distress and a plane just went down in Ahukini Bay,” Higbee said, pointing to the Ocean Safety swimmers that were starting to span out in the bay to perform mock water rescue drills.
The actual mayday call that went out to the control tower at the Lihue Airport said, “Mayday. Mayday Lihue Tower, Kauai Air Flight 123 experienced a bird strike and loss of thrust to both engines. Flight 123 going down in Ahukini Bay.”
Stretchers lined out just in front of the pier as two 45-foot Coast Guard Response Boat-Mediums zoomed about the bay, picking up mock victims. The students one-by-one were carried to a staging zone off the fishing pier in the parking lot where American Medical Ambulance personnel bandaged some of them and administered mock treatment.
Many of the students went through the drill several times, while others were marked as part of more severe medical triage and were told not to go through the drill multiple times.
While the mock simulation was meant to increase interagency cooperation between the Coast Guard and first responders, including a pre-operation the day before, the drill was a success in Higbee’s point of view.
“It’s been a great day,” Higbee said after the main operations had concluded, besides Ocean Safety diving rescue drills, which were still being performed. “This was beyond my expectations. I had a general idea of what it was going to look like, but this was a little bit beyond what I anticipated.”
Higbee praised what he called a “big community effort.”
“We definitely learned a few things that will help us and the lessons learned will help with the process going forward,” he said, adding the operation was a proof of concept and that he hopes the success of the drill on Kauai will lead to other mock drills in the state.
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Ryan Collins, county reporter, can be reached at 245-0424 or
rcollins@thegardenisland.com.
Glad to see SDOT-A practice their Water Rescue Plan for their triennial aircraft accident exercise. This is the second water rescue exercise that I am aware of at Lihue Airport in the past fifteen years. The first exercise was a joint TSA LIH & SDOTA exercise that involved a Man Portable Air Defense System (MANPADS) that shot down a departing aircraft that crashed into Hanamaulu Bay. At that time, the SDOT-A, TSA, ARFF, USCG, DLNR DOCARE, KPD, Sheriff, Wilcox Hospital, PMRF, Kauai High School and numerous other agencies participated. Kudos to all participants!