It’s a fictional scenario—a tornado in South Tulsa yesterday, and one that hits the airport today—but it’s the situation that airport and community disaster responders dealt with today as part of a full-scale drill.
Daniel Meier with the airport says the drill is mandated once every three years. He describes part of the scenario that was acted out.
“It was set up so that there was a large airplane, that was going from South America to DFW, and then it was diverted to Tulsa due to weather down there,” he said, “and so that plane was supposedly sitting at the terminal with passengers on it, while the tornado actually hit.”
“EMSA, Tulsa Area Emergency Management, all different community resources, Tulsa Fire Department, they’re all involved in this as well,” he said, “and so of course they’ve been dealing with the disaster that supposedly happened in South Tulsa the day before. Now they have two on their hands, so it was designed to see how the system could respond if everybody was stretched thin.”
He says any improvements that might need to be made will be incorporated into future disaster plans.