El Paso International Airport (EPIA) officials announced Friday the successful completion of the Live Fire Training and Full-Scale Exercise to ensure passenger safety and security through comprehensive emergency preparedness.
“This was the first time this type of training was held at EPIA allowing Airport Rescue and Fire Fighting personnel to train in scenarios at their home airport,” EPIA officials shared. “Up until this week, they had gone out of town to undergo mandatory annual live fire training.”
During the weeklong training, El Paso International Airport Rescue and Fire Fighting (ARFF) participated in live fire training designed to test the skills of the specialized firefighters utilizing a Live Fire Trainer that provides intense and realistic firefighting conditions.
The rigorous training wrapped up with a Full-Scale Emergency Exercise to test and evaluate the Airport Emergency Plan (AEP) in a real-time practice environment, as well as the response coordination among various agencies and first responders that would be necessary in the event of an actual incident.
Annual Live Fire Training and the Triennial Full-Scale Emergency Exercise are both requirements of the FAA’s Part 139 Certificate, which allows EPIA to accept commercial air traffic.
For this exercise, the airport brought representatives from over 24 different agencies from the across the region to participate in this year’s training.
Participating agencies include: Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, BorderRAC, City of El Paso, Delta Air Lines, DHL, El Paso Fire, El Paso Police, Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation, FedEX, Fort Bliss, Frontier, G2, GAT, Office of Emergency Management, Primeflight, Red Cross, Streets and Maintenance, Sun Metro, Southwest Airlines, the U.S. Transportation and Security Administration, UPS, and area hospitals.
Airport officials added that, to ensure the health and safety of staff and partners and limit large gatherings, training relied on teleconferencing platforms.
