as for the Fire Service. If they had 2 incidents ongoing the OIC would close the Airport as he could not guarantee response times. Also as stated before once the larger tenders were emptied they would have to be topped up again before any decent CAT level could be restored. So bravo to the OIC for taking what would have been a very challenged decision but the I believe to the correct one
this one clearly isn't going away. I made some of this point very early on in this thread but the post got deleted - presumably because it was considered to be deviating from the main topic - but now I have a couple of minutes so I'll try again.
Here is how an airport fire service works in very general terms - what I'm describing is the case for the UK, but there are variations in other countries. An airport decides that it wants to offer itself to particular types and, importantly, sizes of aircraft. Depending upon the size of the largest aircraft that it wants to be able to accommodate, a certain level of fire fighting and rescue facilities are required. These are defined in ICAO Annex 14. Many airports that provide cover or higher categories - bigger - aircraft will actually exceed the minimum requirements for a variety of reasons.
Amongst the other requirements for an airport fire service is to be able to attend an incident anywhere on the airport within a certain period of time. It's important to note that this does not mean every fire vehicle and fireman has to get to the aircraft within that period. Usually what happens is that all the fire vehicles will head out to the incident when called, but a rapid intervention vehicle carrying a senior fire officer will quickly get to the incident and will assess whether some or all of the other vehicles on their way are required.
In the event of a serious incident the external fire services (and indeed hospitals, ambulances and so on) will also be called. In theory the airport fire service is there to provide immediate fire fighting and rescue service with particular expertise for the airport and aircraft environment. As soon as the external services arrive, they start to relieve the airport fire service who are then able to return to their base, replenish their media and in other ways prepare to provide the airport with its published level of fire cover again. During the turnout, as was the case at Heathrow recently, while an incident is being attended by the airport fire service, the level of fire cover available for other movements is reduced, perhaps to zero. In practice, it's likely that any aircraft on the approach or taking off will continue as normal but subsequent movements that require fire cover will quickly be advised of the situation and, we'll need to go somewhere else in accordance with their SOPs.
Those who were astonished, stunned, amazed, indignant and so on, at the picture posted earlier showing lots of fire engines surrounding the ETH aircraft, as was pointed out by another poster earlier, most of the fire vehicles look like they are from external services - as will no doubt be the case for the personnel 'twiddling their thumbs'. A quick glance suggests there are 6 external fire appliances and one or two senior police and fire service personnel cars along with one mobile incident control room (probably part of the airport fire service), two airport appliances, the airport fire boss's car and an airside ops vehicle. All standard fayre after a serious incident at a major airport.
By the way, note that not all aircraft require to have fire cover available. That will not be the case at Heathrow, but there are some situations where movements can continue without fire cover. Unless the runway is blocked, and even that is moot by some interpretations, the airport does not close - it merely cannot provide fire cover.
Return to the situation where the senior fire officer reaches an incident and determines that only a minimum level of response is required and that the majority of the vehicles can return to the station. There's no need to close the airport, it's just that the level of fire cover may be reduced temporarily. At Heathrow this week, it seems highly probable that with two incidents in progress either coincidently or in quick succession, fire cover was reduced to zero.
That the mainstream media cannot distinguish between this situation and the airport being closed may not be surprising. But some supposedly professional aviation people don't know the difference is worrying.
I mentioned early on that sometimes large airport the level of cover is greater than the minimum required in some circumstances. One example is to be able to maintain full, published level of cover for aircraft movements and still to be able to respond to minor incidents or to provide a limited level of cover the public buildings that tend to get put up at an airport. Another situation that is quite common is that of a large airport which requires more than one fire station in order to be able to provide the response required to meet the regulations. For anyone who is interested, there are situations, although not in the UK as far as I am aware, where an airport fire service may leave the airport to attend a fire in nearby areas because the external fire service is far distant - this arises for remote areas where the airport is providing, perhaps, the only access to the area.
This is the general situation. I, of course, would welcome clarification or correction from anyone intimately aware of the current procedures at Heathrow.