How are fire trucks supposed to respond to incidents involving airplanes, as it appears this case involves, if the runway is off limits to them?

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nradov 3 hours ago | parent [-]

The way it's supposed to work, the ground controller first verifies that there are no traffic conflicts before clearing vehicles to cross an active runway.

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bombcar 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Which is exactly what failed here, so saying "it shouldn't fail by not failing" doesn't help terribly much.

Having grade-separate crossings for vehicles might, but that introduces new issues (plane skidding off runway could hit the incline and break up).

	▲	selectodude 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		O’Hare has those but it’s not helpful for emergencies that happen on the runway itself.