San
Francisco, California - November 20, 2013
San
Francisco International Airport (SFO) released a performance review today,
highlighting improvements that need to be made in coordinating post-disaster
responses. Conducted by an aviation consulting firm, the self-imposed review
was ordered to analyze the airport's response to the Asiana Flight 214 crash on
July 6. Three young girls were killed in the crash or its aftermath and over
180 others on the plane sustained injuries.
According
to the San Francisco Chronicle, an automated system designed to notify key
airport personnel of an emergency "failed within minutes of the airport's
biggest disaster ever." The system, which cost the airport nearly $12,000
per year, was supposed to send voice mails to airport managers directly after
an emergency in order to coordinate an appropriate response. Due to a glitch in
the software, airport managers were forced to call over 100 key officials one
at a time. The review does not make any mention on how precisely this affected
the airport's response, only that it is an area for SFO to make improvements.
The airport has since created a crisis hotline at the airport linking air
traffic controllers to emergency response managers.
The
other major area of emphasis mentioned in the review had to do with SFO's
website, which started to fail only two minutes after the crash and went dark
only 30 minutes later. The Chronicle reported that the website, which cost a
total of $180,000 to set up, ran off only a single server and handled traffic
of less than 20,000 visitors per day. In the aftermath of the Asiana crash, the
website clocked 75,000 visitors before it went down. To make matters worse, it
took airport officials hours to get a webpage up directing traffic to Twitter,
which many have credited as being the only useful resource after the crash.
Charles Schuler, head of external communications at SFO, called the
eight-year-old SFO website "ancient," by modern standards. In August,
the airport website moved to an Amazon cloud-based platform in order to provide
necessary redundancies in an emergency.
Other
areas of improvement for airport emergency response include the need for a
standard triage protocol between San Francisco and San Mateo counties,
integration of any additional medical evacuation resources, keeping airport
restaurants and services open 24 hours for victims, and deterring airport
hotels from price gouging (some passengers reportedly had to pay between $400
and $500 for a room).
The
review did not make any mention of the young Chinese student that was struck
and killed by a San Francisco Fire Department vehicle. A San Mateo County court
has already ruled that the San Francisco Fire Department and the firefighter
driving the vehicle will not be held criminally responsible for the girl's
death.
The
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is scheduled to hold hearings on
the Asiana crash in December. The full NTSB report on the Asiana crash
investigation is not expected to be released until next year.
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