SFOS POST ASIANA CRASH SELF REPORT CARD by Tom Vacar SFO officals say when this Asiana jumbo jet broke up on the runway last July, first responder coordination was remarkable. Everybody really collaborated well together. So, the response efforts and that coordination we thought went very well, said Doug Yakel, SF Airports Spokesman. But, after an almost four month self-review, SFO found some things lacking in its response. First, the airports computerized system, to call in needed staff, failed. Our backup system is a phone tree notification process. That did work well for us, says Yakel. Within just a few minutes of the crash, the Emergency Operations Center here at SFO opened up. Within an hour, there were more than a hundred people in there from 20 different agencies coordinating their efforts. At the same time, the airports overwhelmed website crashed. The system that usually handles under 20,000 hits per day, was blasted by 75,000. Weve gone to a new solution for our website that allows us to scale bandwidth, in other words, to be able to handle a massive increase in traffic, said Yakel. So, the airport quickly turned to social media, Twitter and the like, to update facts and quash rumors. Social media really took front and center as a primary tool for an organization to communicate, adds Yakel. Other improvements in progress: 1) put in a hotline from the emergency operation center to the air traffic control tower, 2) keep restaurants open twenty/four seven to serve stranded passengers, 3) prevent hotels from gouging passengers stranded by airport closures and 4) set up a large facility on-site to reunite families with passengers. Were all about self-improvement, says Yakel. Airport officials say they will share all thier findings with other airports. The National Transportation Safety Board will have its own crash response evaluation early next year, including the airport response.
Posted on: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 23:42:51 +0000
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