Flagstaff Airport after-action: exercise showed strong interagency response but flagged staffing, patient-tracking and radio gaps

Flagstaff emergency management, airport and public-safety staff presented the after-action report and improvement plan for the airport’s 2024 triennial full-scale exercise, Operation Ready Flag, which simulated an alert‑3 aircraft incident with mass casualties. Council and staff described the drill as one of the largest-scale exercises in the state since 2018.

Stacy Brecklenecks, emergency management director, and Brian Gull, airport director, led the briefing. Gull explained the Flagstaff Airport must meet Federal Aviation Administration requirements under 14 CFR part 139, which include a full-scale emergency exercise at least once every three years. The 2024 scenario included an aircraft crash on the de-icing pad, heavy smoke from a simulated wildfire and a surge of patients transported to Flagstaff Medical Center by ground and air.

Daniel Kelly, the city’s emergency program manager, said exercise planners measured performance against nine core capabilities from FEMA’s National Preparedness Goal, including fire operations, mass casualty incident (MCI) handling, incident command and interoperable communications. He said strengths included a successful transfer of command and robust mutual-aid response by regional fire services; Flagstaff Medical Center’s surge plan also performed well.

But the exercise exposed several shortcomings staff listed in the improvement plan. Brian Gull and others said airport operations are currently combined with aircraft rescue and firefighting (ARFF) duties. On the day of the exercise, a concurrent wildlife (coyote) response required an ARFF crew member to leave the station in an operations vehicle, delaying the second ARFF apparatus and creating a gap versus FAA response expectations. Gull described a longer-term remedy of splitting operations and ARFF duties into separate teams; the airport estimated that would require about seven additional positions to provide broader coverage across shifts, but staff have not yet identified a funding source.

Fire department leaders and hospital staff also highlighted patient-tracking and communications challenges. Deputy Chief Chris Fallon said field crews were overwhelmed early on and that triage tags were applied late, causing patients to be triaged multiple times. Radio traffic on a single operating frequency became congested; Fallon said evaluators recommended predefining incident communication channels and expanding interoperable radio training.

Flagstaff Medical Center managers reported difficulties managing helicopter patient flow and maintaining an internal security perimeter during the surge; they plan to update standard operating procedures for victim staging and to study alternate security staffing models. County emergency management noted logistics staffing was strained and that training on the state’s transition from WebEOC to Teams was still needed.

Staff gave timelines for corrective actions ranging from months to a year. Council members who observed the exercise praised the realism of the training and the transparency of the report; some asked for clearer timelines on the most critical fixes. Staff said the after-action report is available electronically and that some corrective steps have already begun.

What’s next: staff will track implementation of the improvement plan, continue interagency work on communications and patient tracking, and pursue longer-term staffing changes for the airport’s ARFF and operations functions pending funding decisions.

(Reporting note: Direct quotes are from presenters identified in the transcript and are cited in the provenance.)