By Curtis Galbraith

GP Airport

Practice for emergency personnel Wednesday at Grande Prairie Airport

Nov 8, 2019 | 12:52 PM

Close to 50 people took part in an emergency exercise Wednesday at the Grande Prairie Airport.

The group included RCMP members and firefighters, along with volunteers, GPRC students and people from Technical Search and Rescue, Air Canada, and NAVCanada.

Airport director of business and regulatory affairs Will Stewart says the day included practice with both a bomb threat and aircraft accident.

“One of the biggest things we’re looking for is communication with all the different departments involved. We’re all using different types of radios and typically work on different frequencies and we need to make sure that we’re able to talk amongst each other when we’re out dealing with an incident. That came together excellent here.”

He adds Transport Canada requires such exercises to be done every three years.

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“Ultimately, through a regulatory requirement, we have to meet certain rules and standards are far as what we’re practicing. A significant aircraft accident is one of them. The ability to step up our security program is the second one. The bomb threat seemed like the most realistic, real-world option for that.”

Stewart says regular flights were not impacted.

“We were able to stage our exercise on an unused apron in front of our air tanker base. They’re shut down for the season, so they allowed us to use the apron in front of their facility.”

EMS people were going to take part as well but were called out to the 16-vehicle pile-up Wednesday morning on Highway 2.