Episode 309: What Aviation Emergencies Teach Us About Coordination and Preparedness with Greg Pobar

Episode notes

Aviation is one of the safest forms of transportation in the world, but that safety depends on careful preparation for events everyone hopes will never happen.

Hello Smart Firefighting Community!

Welcome to another episode of covering real world innovations via interviews with fire service and technology industry experts that empower YOU to develop your very own Smart Firefighting strategy.

Recorded live at the Institution of Fire Engineers (IFE) 2025 Conference alongside the AFAC, WAFA, and Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience Conference in Perth, Australia.

In this episode, Greg Pobar of Regional Airport Management Services shares lessons from a career in emergency services and aviation planning.

He explains the concept of the crash community, the wide network of agencies that must coordinate during an aviation emergency, including airports, airlines, police, fire, medical teams, and government partners.

Greg also describes a real incident in remote Western Australia that revealed how quickly passenger care, injuries, and limited resources can create complex challenges.

The conversation also explores emerging concerns for responders, including new aircraft materials, evolving firefighting approaches, and the growing partnership between engineers and firefighters working to improve safety before emergencies occur.

So take a listen to hear what he has to share.

Head to www.smartfirefighting.com to discover how SFF accelerates innovation for emergency responders, to find out when our next event is, or review our curated resources.

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Chapters

1. 0:00 Intro, live from Perth
2. 1:15 Greg's presentation and background
3. 2:18 The crash community: agencies working together
4. 6:13 Supporting regional airports
5. 7:37 PFAS and firefighting foam alternatives
6. 10:11 Why fire engineers and the fire service connect
7. 13:42 Thermal runaway and emerging risks
8. 14:23 Technology catching Greg's attention
9. 15:42 Words to live by

Questions answered in this episode

What is the crash community in aviation emergencies?

Greg Pobar describes the crash community as all the agencies involved in aviation emergencies, including investigative agencies, airlines, engineers, airports, police, fire, ambulance, governments at all levels, and embassies and consulates for international flights. He says all these agencies believe they will be in the field sorting things out, but you need structure to involve them at the right levels for the right reasons.

Hear it at 2:29

When was the last major commercial aviation crash in Australia?

Greg Pobar says Australia's last commercial aviation crash happened over 80 years ago, when a DC-4 flying from Perth to Adelaide crashed in the hills, killing 29 people. A similar incident occurred 10 years later in 1950 in Queensland, where the same number of souls were lost when an F-50 crashed on its way into Mackay Airport.

Hear it at 3:50

What new challenge do composite materials in modern aircraft create for firefighters?

Greg Pobar says the composites in modern aircraft, when they burn or break, can release screw-like microfibres into the air that can penetrate firefighter tunics, clothing, or skin and stay there permanently. Some rate these microfibres as a greater risk than asbestos, and the science is not yet definitive on how to contain these contaminants safely.

Hear it at 8:22

What is RAMS and what does it do for regional airports?

RAMS, Regional Airport Management Services, provides services to smaller, local government run airports in Western Australia. Greg Pobar says these airports need high levels of skill, expertise, and compliance help, and RAMS provides those services so airport owners and operators can meet Civil Aviation Authority requirements. His role is to run realistic emergency exercises that airports are required to conduct every two years.

Hear it at 6:29

What is Greg Pobar's view on emergency service planning?

Greg Pobar quotes emergency law expert Michael Eburn, saying a good plan is good defense, a bad plan is bad defense, and no plan is no defense. Pobar emphasizes that plans must be realistic, not just documents that sit unused.

Hear it at 15:57

Transcript

Machine transcript of the published audio. Names may be misspelled and some sections are missing.

Ep 309 transcript

What Aviation Emergencies Teach Us About Coordination and Preparedness with Greg Pobar

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, Greg Pobar

Source: Whisper medium.en machine transcription of the published Podbean audio (no original transcript found in Drive), lightly cleaned. Speakers were separated by voice clustering and then checked and assigned by hand at every speaker change. Gaps where the model returned no usable text are marked [inaudible m:ss].

[0:00] Kevin Sofen: Welcome to our podcast mini-series, recorded live at the Institution of Fire Engineers 2025 Conference in Perth, Australia, alongside the AFAC, WAFA, and the Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience Conferences. With over 28 conversations with fire chiefs, engineers, researchers and innovators, we explored how the fire and emergency community is adapting into a rapidly changing world. From climate resilience and community-led adaption to the rise of new technologies like satellites, AI, and simple tools designed for the field to the importance of mental health, diversity, and global collaboration, these episodes highlight the shared challenges and inspiring solutions shaping the future of safety. Enjoy. All right, I think it's officially podcast 15, alongside Gregory Pobar with Regional Airport Management Services. What's going on, Greg?

[0:55] Greg Pobar: Yeah, well, I've just had an interesting afternoon, catching up with colleagues. I presented at the IFE stream this afternoon. Surprised to see that half of the audience were ring-ins and people I know or have worked with. And I think that was either heartening or they were there to challenge me, but no, it was a good audience and a good afternoon.

[1:15] Kevin Sofen: Wonderful. And so what were you talking about in your presentation?

[1:18] Greg Pobar: Well, I have a background out of foreign emergency services and up through the career of emergency services and into emergency management. And after the last quarter of my career, I'd spent that at Perth Air Court as the emergency planning manager there, semi-retired now working for Rams, as you pointed out, as an emergency planning manager for them. I've found that experience 15 years now in aviation has taught me a lot about the challenges of dealing with aviation emergencies, responding to aviation crashes, and preparing for the next one, which if we can't remember the last one, I question as to the extent that we operate.

[1:55] Kevin Sofen: One thing I know about aviation is that it's kind of like an onion, it's kind of complicated. There's a lot of layers.

[2:01] Greg Pobar: There's a lot of layers, yes.

[2:02] Kevin Sofen: You've got the airplane manufacturers, you've got the airplane, the providers, you've got the airports, you've got different FAA, you've got TSA, and obviously that's American terms, but then there's all these just, there's a lot of hands in the pot, and they all kind of have their own say on how things would be done, and they have to work together, So I'm just sort of stating the obvious, but I would love to hear your thoughts on the kind of complexity and challenges that presents.

[2:29] Greg Pobar: It should have been in my presentation. I touched just on that. So I talked about what most people call these emergency committees, but I call it the crash community. And the crash community is big. As you said, it's layers of governance. It's layers of investigative agencies. It's aviation, it's airlines, it's engineers, it's airports, it's police, fire, ambulance, it's governments at all levels. It's embassies and consulates, if you're dealing with an international flight, it's complex. And all those agencies, and there are dozens of them, really have a belief that they're going to be in the field, sorting it out, when in actual fact, we've got to have some sort of order or process or structure to still involve all those agencies, but at the right levels for the right reasons. And that makes responding to an aviation emergency really complex and very difficult to pull together and needs a very high level of coordination.

[3:26] Kevin Sofen: So I'm assuming within your role, you've had a story or two, or an example of something that's happened where you just mentioned that, where you've needed this inter-agency coordination. Paying a picture on that kind of, and then maybe if you can point to an example of where inter-agency coordination has had to occur amongst the crash community to deal with a unfortunate crash or challenge within the airport setting?

[3:50] Greg Pobar: So in Australia, we've been very lucky. We don't have, we can't remember our last crash. It actually happened over 80 years ago. 29 lives were lost in a commercial aviation crash. It was out of Perth. It was a DC-4. It crashed in the hills on its way to Adelaide and 29 souls were lost. A similar incident occurred 10 years later, 1950 in Queensland, where a same number of souls were lost and when an F-50 crashed on its way into Mackay Airport. We don't know the last, but we do have a lot of incidents, as the world does, as every major airport does. There's things that go on all the time. And the agencies and the awareness and the complications occur really when it comes to passenger management. You can have passengers that are injured, passengers who are not injured, passengers who are injured but won't tell you they're injured, and you have a whole range of challenges and scenarios. To give you an example, many years ago, an aircraft had a computer malfunction put it into a dive over Exmouth in Western Australia, remote area in North-western Australia. And the aircraft had to land at that airport and it had some internal structural failures as a result of that dive. But that airport, even though it's a defense base on standby and even though it's a divert airfield for lots of the large aircraft that fly out of the Middle East to Australia, the services are an hour away. And so that aircraft landed on the tarmac. They were unable to leave the aircraft. There were many injured people on the aircraft. There was no border or immigration service and there was a lot of distressed people and a lot of hurt people. It was interesting because the hospital services in the local community were very few. There are a lot of injured people and word got around on that plane that don't tell anyone you're injured because you'll end up here and you need to get back to Perth. Eventually all those passengers were transferred to Perth and when they arrived in the airport they started revealing their injuries and the extent of their injuries. And that created a high level of confusion. They needed support from community agencies, they needed support from the airline, they needed support from welfare and agencies because many are tourists. They needed first aid or hospitalisation. It was just a good example to show how complex things can get when you're dealing with a couple hundred passengers. Some of these aircraft carry 500 passengers now and that's the challenge. Airlines technically responsible for their passengers and they do the best they can, but you know dealing with dealing with 500 people in various states of distress is very challenging.

[6:15] Kevin Sofen: And so with your role now you'd mentioned that you tried to retire and then you unretired and with RAMS, what is RAMS doing and what's RAMS role with continuing to try and elevate safety within the aviation world?

[6:29] Greg Pobar: So RAMS is a I think they're a little bit of an elite team, the Regional Airport management services are there. Many of them are from the major airports. My supervisor has been Chief Operations Officer for major airports and they provide services particularly to the regional airports in Western Australia because these airports are smaller. They're local government run airports. There's a high level as you know of skill and expertise and compliance and legislation regulation to be followed. So RAMS provides all those services for the airport owners and airport operators to be able to operate within that within those directions from the Civil Aviation Authority. And my role with RAMs is to run exercises. So the legislation requires airports to exercise every two years and with some desktops or other activities in between years and they expect those exercises to be realistic. So I have for many years now run emergency exercises at a lot of the airports in Western Australia in relation to improving their area of emergency plans and being realistic. A lot of plans aren't realistic, so we try and make these as realistic as possible.

[7:37] Kevin Sofen: So this is now kind of a left field question, but in America, there has been the big challenge and big concern of all things with Class B foams and the use of, particularly with an aerial firefighting, the use of these foams that have PFAS in them. And obviously there's, PFAS had been used because it's actually very good at putting out some of these highly flammable fires, you know, with all these different mixed concoction of gases and flammable liquids. Where's the aviation world at in regards to trying to address these challenges that exist while also understanding that there is these environmental challenges and it's a balance, but I wasn't sure what that's like in the international fire community and how the conversation at PFAS is going on right now.

[8:22] Greg Pobar: It's interesting you raise that. So there's alternatives to PFAS, which is being dealt with worldwide now, which is a concern. there are alternatives to that. But there's an added complication in aviation, and that is now the construction of the aircraft and the composites. So the composites in these aircraft, the science isn't definitive. They burn or if they break, they'll put into the air almost screw-like microfibres that have been shown that they can screw through the firefighter's tunics and stay there permanently or in through clothing or in through skin. And the next challenge in aviation is it's not just a good old-fashioned firefighting and throwing foam at the aircraft. It's about how do you contain these contaminants? How do you contain these microfibers that are sometimes rated as a greater risk than asbestos? And so the new world is how are we doing this? What are we exercising? Are we really going to do this? Are we saving life first and hoping for the best that there's not an added complication? Or do we deal with the added complication through the techniques of first response and the first responders and truly practice safety from the very beginning. It's difficult to do. I mean, in some instances, I'm aware of some fire services, they say wood polish in the tank of foam and water helps keep these fibers on the ground and not in the air at this fire. But as I said, the science is not definitive, but I really worry that there's something looming over the horizon just as complicated as the use of PFAS in those sort of foams.

[9:49] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, I think it's called snake oil.

[9:51] Greg Pobar: Yeah, exactly, something's gotta work.

[9:53] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, something, I don't know. Wood finish seems like a good idea. Yeah. Try anything once, right?

[10:00] Greg Pobar: I find that quite extraordinary that we're resorting to wood polish into our on-board tanks simply to mitigate the risk of microfibers and these composites in the air.

[10:11] Kevin Sofen: Yeah. Well, and also, I mean, I'm going to now kind of pull it back to kind of why we're here and ultimately in this little podcast booth that we're in. You obviously spoke today at the institution of fire engineers conference and give the presentation on a lot of what we talked about. I'm curious, in your words, what is the institution of fire engineers to you, and why is it an important organization that has a place in the fire service community?

[10:37] Greg Pobar: Well, I've witnessed it today in some of the presentations, and last night even just talking to colleagues at the Institute of Fire Engineers' dinner. There's a definite link between engineering and firefighting. There's a strong link between engineering and firefighting. Engineers can make their job easier. Good engineering can prevent the fire from happening. Engineering can prevent that fire if it does happen from spreading. And those systems can alleviate the challenges that firefighters might face, either whether it's aircraft or buildings or any sort of assets or structures. My sense is that the services are talking together much more now. There's much more cohesion and interaction between engineers and firefighters. And you've actually seen that at this conference and even with some of the displays there's some really good high-tech modern engineered machinery and appliances around here and it's the same with whether it's building codes or building standards. So it's actually, there is a direct partnership that's needed, one, to reduce the occurrence of fire, but two, I guess aid firefighters or mitigate one having to turn out all the time or if they do turn out mitigating the risks that they face when they have to hide the fire. And I sense that's It's not always been the most greatest of partnerships, but certainly in all the presentations I've seen today, there's an excited enthusiasm about how it's coming together. So that's what I've gained from particularly this conference and listening to the presentations.

[12:01] Kevin Sofen: Right on. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And you mentioned that dynamic of you can engineer our way. We can prevent through engineering some of these disasters and problems from happening. And that's not taking the lunch of a firefighter. That's not preventing future jobs for firefighters, that it's ultimately continue to find this harmony and balance of the engineering world, the fire response world, and how do we continue to work together to create these knowledge sharing opportunities to have this end goal of reducing these risks, preventing disaster from happening. And when they do happen, knowing that we can respond the most effectively to save property and save lives.

[12:38] Greg Pobar: Well, that's the core of the business. It's interesting to apply that to aviation, the failover systems, the ability to put our cargo hold fires, detection systems on aircraft. Those systems are advanced and I'm in awe. I'm in awe at engineering and aviation, safety engineering in aircraft, and I said that in my presentation. I'm in awe in airports and how they operate, and I'm in awe at control systems, the responders, and yeah, it's about making people safe and the community safe in the first distance. And if you can engineer threats out of that, then that's what we should do. I do worry though that the world is moving faster than we can have engineering solutions. A great examples of that are EVs, electric vehicles. Yeah, just a great transformation of transport. But how advanced engineering if you like, but really did that sort of design pick up on the fire risks, the threats to the public. And we're sort of trying to play catch up now. So

[13:32] Kevin Sofen: Don't worry, firefighters are heroes. They'll figure it out, right?

[13:34] Greg Pobar: Yeah, well, I had noticed in some parts of Europe, they licked the cars up and put them in a container full of water on the back of the truck for two weeks.

[13:42] Kevin Sofen: It's not when you think about the thermal runaway and some of challenges when it goes to the junkyard and I mean, if you want 100% guarantee that thing is not going to reignite, not a bad idea.

[13:52] Greg Pobar: Yeah and I think that's a good example, consult fire engineers first, before the firefighters have to put it out.

[13:58] Kevin Sofen: Measure once, cut twice or measure twice, cut once, I keep missing, I forget.

[14:02] Greg Pobar: We see a lot of that happening in our modern world now, you know, whether it's drones or EVs or a whole range of things getting ahead of us and legislation's trying to pay catch up and...

[14:12] Kevin Sofen: It's a constant catch me if you can, cat and mouse.

[14:15] Greg Pobar: Yeah, it is, it is. It's an interesting world, but again, you're always going to need the emergency services. And from my perspective, yeah, they do get you on.

[14:22] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, well, you kind of touched in a little bit with some of the emerging technologies, but I'm curious of anything that's kind of something that you're excited about or something, a room for hope or optimism within the world of aviation safety, firefighter safety, public safety operators, anything that you're kind of excited about or catching your attention right now?

[14:42] Greg Pobar: I think that in the last 10 to 20 years, has been a real maturity of emergency services. Agencies, you know, 10, 20 years ago, and it's part of my discussion today, who's in charge, we're in charge, no, you're not, I'm in charge, that sort of world. That world is gone. There is just full integration, information sharing, in-field unified command models that just bring it all together. Emergency services in this country and I think in other countries now have been much more well-funded and supported. I look at even some of the lower economic countries and some of them that are going through turmoil at the moment. I, of course, I have an interest in their emergency services and how they respond. And they are getting better gear and better equipment and integrating more with their colleagues and other services and sorting problems. I think the emergency response, emergency service, emergency management communities are really maturing together. And I sort of, I have a lot of confidence that if you need help, you're gonna get it.

[15:42] Kevin Sofen: Yeah. Well said, Greg. And my final question I want to throw at you, is there any quote or words of wisdom or something that you live by that you've applied within your role within aviation safety, whether your role at RAMS or just something within your daily life?

[15:57] Greg Pobar: Yeah, I'm gonna quote a gentleman by the name of Michael Eburn. I spoke to Michael on the phone this week. He's an emergency lawyer. He's a doctor of emergency law, was associate professor at the Australian National University. He publishes a book called Emergency Law. Andy has a website called Emergency Walk, and he discusses challenges about everything. Ambulance, driving under blights and sirens, who can, who can't, when, why. And I got him involved and asked him a lot of questions about aviation emergency management. And I always talk about plans. They're not realistic. You never pull them out on the day. You don't read them, you know, and where are we at? You know, and I said to him one day, I said, Michael, where are we at with these plans? We don't even pull them out on the day. You know, we just wing it, you know, excuse the puns. And he looked at me and he said, Greg, he said, a good plan is good defense. A bad plan is bad defense. And no plan is no offense. And I've carried that with me all along in my planning.

[16:49] Kevin Sofen: So right down the wall right here. That's right. That's brilliant. Well, Greg, it's been a pleasure learning and talking more about you, about your presentation and the work you're leading with in aviation safety. And just excited to continue to learn more and stay in touch.

[17:01] Greg Pobar: No worries. Thank you very much.

[17:02] Kevin Sofen: Thanks for what you're doing.

[17:02] Greg Pobar: Thank you.

[17:05] Kevin Sofen: And that's a wrap for this episode of the Smart Firefighting Podcast. If you found value in this conversation, hit like, leave a comment, share it to someone, and tell us what you enjoyed most. Take care, and thanks for listening.