Last week’s Thursday I went to the Airport Fire Brigade at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol with college. Our teacher promised us to go there a while ago, and now we finally got the opportunity to learn more about the prevention and protection against fires at the airport.

The fire department at Schiphol is situated at three different locations on the airport. Each location is responsible for its own area. In case of an air crash or bad landing, the fire fighters within that area have to arrive at the scene within three minutes. For problems at the terminal buildings they have more time. When an aircraft crashes and catches fire on the wings and fuselage it takes about three minutes before the fire reaches the inside of the aircraft, like the cabin or cockpit. Saving lives becomes very difficult from that point, and the chance to survive the crash reduces enormously.

The day started with a presentation to introduce us to the daily tasks and responsibilities of the fire brigade. After we finished the theoretical part of the excursion, the visitors were separated into groups and we went outside. As one of the few airports in the world, Schiphol has a unique training facility for the fire fighters. It’s called the Firefly, a remake of a passenger aircraft to simulate an air crash and to practise the extinguishing of the huge fires in such a situation. The fire brigade gave us a short demonstration of the Firefly.

To be honest it wasn’t as spectacular as I expected, of course, the flames were pretty huge, but the fire was extinguished in seconds. I’ve uploaded a video of the demonstration to my YouTube account, so see for yourself here.