Airports are an important part of emergency preparedness being that they are one of the countries critical Lifelines. Auckland Airport serves as Aotearoa New Zealand’s gateway, supporting millions of travellers to connect with each other and the world. As custodians, our role is to plan ahead and ensure that anyone who passes through our Airport is safe.
Emergency preparedness activities consist of many components, including a complex cycle of planning, preparing equipment, training staff, exercising and improvements. Emergency preparedness exercises are crucial because they allow organizations and individuals to test their response plans, identify weaknesses in procedures, improve coordination between team members, and refine decision-making skills, ultimately leading to a more effective response in a real emergency situation.
Feedback from exercises can be used to update and modify existing emergency response plans, ensuring they are relevant, effective and engaging so that participants are more likely to be involved and retain the information of the practices they learn.
Auckland Airport has a dynamic operating environment with a wide range of emergencies such as bomb threats, aircraft events, animals airside, biosecurity issues, building fires, active armed offenders, screening breaches, IT outages, pandemics, motor vehicle accidents and natural disasters.
This necessitates a high level of multi-agency coordination and cooperation. One important way of preparing for these events are emergency response exercises to improve everyone’s readiness when 'the big one' hits.
Chiana will speak about her exercise regime and share her experience on what has worked in the aviation environment. She will share with you the ways in which she engages with stakeholders at all levels to drive the right kind of engagement, hold attendee focus and get them practically involved.
She will also share some of the human side to her role, sharing a training video of passengers affected from an aircraft crash.