BUSINESS in most parts of Lusaka yesterday temporarily came to a virtual standstill after a commercial airliner apparently had crashed at the Lusaka International Airport.
The route to the international airport, about 20 kilometres from the city centre, was clogged with traffic as curious onlookers watched in awe as emergency vehicles, including police cars and ambulances, hurtled to and fro with sirens blaring apparently transporting the injured and dead to the University Teaching Hospital (UTH).
It was, however, only after several hours that it dawned to the city dwellers that the whole dramatic episode was a mere routine simulated emergency evacuation exercise conducted by the National Airports Corporation (NAC) and the Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) to prepare different sectors of society in the event that a real plane crash occurred.
In a media brief soon after the exercise, director of civil aviation, Chitalu Kabalika said the exercise was appropriate and in line with airline industry that routine mock emergency evacuation exercises were carried out to assess the levels of preparedness at the country’s airports.
Mr Kabalika said in fact, such mock evacuation exercises should normally be carried out once in two years to ensure that the country kept in line with international aviation standards.
The plane crash was assumed to have occurred at the Airport/Great East Road roundabout and caused unsuspecting residents, who were visibly shocked and gripped with fear, believe they would find grotesque scenes of mutilated bodies strewn all over.
According to eyewitnesses, some human “bodies” were found hanging in trees and around nearby bushes with tattered and soiled clothing which looked like blood as emergency workers retrieved them, fastened them on stretchers and loaded them onto waiting ambulances to the UTH and the Airport clinic.
Ambulances from Zambia Police, Zambia Air Force (ZAF), MARS and STS were involved in the exercise.
Telephone lines at the Times of Zambia offices in Lusaka were jammed with calls from members of the public who tipped reporters about the crash as some emotional callers immediately piled blame on the Government for keeping old and obsolete equipment at the international airport.
A check by a Times of Zambia crew that rushed to the airport to investigate the supposed crash, found frantic scenes of medical personnel from the Air Rescue crew, the Zambia Army and police medical teams applying emergency treatment to the injured.
Journalists who were researching at the High Court premises reported that judiciary workers abandoned their offices to witness the relentless screams of blaring sirens speeding towards the hospital as news of the disaster spread like wild fire.
At the UTH, nurses and other medical operatives were on hand at the casualty department receiving the injured and dead as some stretchers were passed on straight to the brought-In-dead (BID) section.
Some residents who were later interviewed complained that they expected the DCA to notify them that the crash was actually a mock exercise rather than to cause panic and anxiety among many.
Some local radio stations were overwhelmed with callers who expressed mixed feelings about the exercise as announcers were at pains to confirm the tragedy to them.
Mr Kabalika, however, insisted the exercises would continue without notice to see the level of preparedness at the airport in an event of a crash, hijack or unexpected fire, among other eventualities.
He said the mock crash was meant to see whether Zambia was ready to meet the international aviation standards.
NAC airport manager, Friday Mulenga said the emergency exercise was meant to see how prepared Zambia was to tackle airline emergencies.
Times of Zambia
Remember the story about the boy who shouted of a lion in grade 3,one day it will be real.
hahaha great mate great…now dats progres…..
This is standard practise and it is applied in the Mines as well.
its good dat the country spends some money on some of these things.
Good job Zedians
This story was on the internet yesterday afternoon. And here it is still news? Please LT, stop embarrassing yourselves like like this. No wonder you hide your identity
Mr Kabalika is right otherwise how else would you see the level of preparedness in such an emergency when everybody else is marely acting
Its good to see that they are preparing for such accidents, i know its scary , but pipo should understand that this needs to be done for their won good.
Happy New Year to all the blogs, life would not be the same with out your comments, God Bless.
After this mock aircrash …I am begging to think that having RB in State House is just another mock gimmick that has been played on Zambians. Can someone shed more light on this…..
Iwe chi Mangani #6, if you don’t like the music change the channel. If you don’t like LT don’t open their site period.
Thank God it was only an exercise – too many plane crashes these days…I hope we have what it takes to deal with the real catastrophe.
i remember when they did that exercise about 6 years ago,it was so much fun my mum who’s a medic ran faster than me,totally shocked!thee training exercises are definately a good idea
Nkani you have made my day, if only RB was a mock president lol.
Zambians like to watch..yaba…..This is good. How many Fire Engines do we have? 2?
Is it a normal procedure not to inform the public before hand? The exercise though necessary could lead to injury, heart attacks or even death to some panicking individuals.
But if everyone knows that they are acting #16 then it would not have the impact. remember even the Obama presidential jet did the same sometime this year. Thats the standard practice. no information before hand. Its not a movie. you are trying to depuict a real life situation here so it has to be as real as possible. If anything, even the police and all those involved shouldnt have known. they should have just be called and told that there is an accident and see how they ran you know.
# 14 Mwanawakwatu…Nanga tingakambe bwanji, with all these mock stuff around….actually for the Veep no one should even guess .It is pure mock.
Anyway about the infamous mock aircrush how many survived it and how many perished.Should we arrange a mock state funeral and use those H3 hammer hearses The late Hon Ben bought us…..
#16 – Thats the idea – we need to have preparedness knowing that in the real event >>>how many people will we lose out of the actual accident??? how many people will we loose out of second or third party injuries??? how many people will we lose to heart attacks??? how will the medical staff react – run away or attend to the dead and injured??? etc.
Without such kind of thinking there would have been no vaccines in the world – just imagine!!!
well the negative feelings expressed show how much we zambians value preparedness and maintenance. thats why things run down so quickly! Disasters are just that …..disasters. They are not planned so if we watched on that day then we should rethink within ourselves and think how more usefull we ought to be in such times.
Yah once in a while zadians should have such an exercise. The terrorism that we just read in newspapers and watch on TV (may) one day posse a threat to our part of the world.Therefore its good to prepare for the worst even if the worst may seem to be far away……….
Nice move. I thought Magande was the only good chess player GRZ had. These guyz are aiming at the EU’s recent ban of Zambian planes in to Europe. That was a very well timed move. Keep it up.
Mr Kabalika, my former class mate, you are the people the country needs in bringing progress. I commend your exercise and wish it cud be extended to State House so we can see the preparedness of RB to evacuate when voted out of office. Good job on this one.
#17 Daniel Banda, While I appreciate your comment I wish to remind you that after Obama’s unannounced jet low flying exercise which you referred to there was a big uproar of anger because of the panic that was caused especially among New Yorkers. So serious was the reaction that a senior White House officer who ordered the exercise was disciplined on orders of the president as far as I can remember.