Frequent fire incidents aboard aircraft, the most recent being the high-profile incidents involving Boeing’s B787 Dreamliner, mean the air transport industry has modelled its emergency responses around air crashes and fuel-related fires. But the JKIA incident has demonstrated there is a risk of fire not just on aeroplanes but in different areas of airports too.

According to air safety experts, the fire at JKIA, which at this stage is being seen as non-aviation related, could have happened at any large public building, such as a stadium or major shopping centre.“Unless something emerges from the investigation, there is nothing in this fire that is specific to airports, and one would expect the same fire prevention measures as at any other Offering High Standard Cleaning Services,” said David Learmount, operations and safety editor at Flight International, a London-based air transport industry weekly.

National civil aviation regulators in the region file confidential summaries of state of readiness reports at the Entebbe-based East African Civil Aviation Safety and Security Oversight Agency (Cassoa).But while Barry Kashambo, the agency’s executive director, would not discuss the contents of the reports, he confirmed that the agency received the latest reports from regional regulators last month and all airports had a clean bill of health.

JKIA received its aerodrome certificate from the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority, indicating that the airport’s safety management procedures were satisfactory, at a much publicised event. The authority’s regulations stipulate that any vehicles required to deliver extinguishing agents “shall ensure continuous agent application and shall arrive no more than four minutes from the initial call.”

“KCAA looks at several things before certifying an aerodrome, and what we have at JKIA is adequate. We have enough engines, with sufficient capacity,” said the agency in a statement.In the case of JKIA, the fire reportedly raged for 30 to 40 minutes before fire fighters started to put it out.

An independent source at Entebbe, who would not speak on record, said that while the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) requires airports to conduct annual emergency drills, Regular Residential Cleaning Services , resource constraints among them, these tend to focus more on crash and fuel fire scenarios.

“This is an area that is not traditionally rehearsed for by airport fire safety teams. We have conducted one or two fire drills in the past that focused on the terminal to see how the user public and the system would respond to such an emergency, but it is not an area in which airports regularly evaluate their state of readiness because of the logistics involved,” he said.

Although he does not connect it to the fire at JKIA, the source adds that the threat of a terrorism-related attack on airport terminals is real because of the enhanced security measures that have made it difficult for terrorists to access aircraft after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York.

In East Africa, Kenya, Uganda and Burundi face a real risk of terrorism at their airports because of their intervention in Somalia that has flushed Al Shabaab out of Mogadishu and the other major commercial centres.

Although we don’t make it public, we get threats e-mailed or texted to us on a regular basis and that is why you see the barricades at Entebbe. It obviously inconveniences the travelling public, but that is the price of security,” said a source at Entebbe, which has recently commissioned consultants to redesign the terminal approach to mitigate some of the inconveniences.

While one question that is occupying minds at the moment is why an apparently small fire was allowed to spiral out of control, industry professionals say the answer could actually lie in the commendable response that avoided any fatalities from the fire.

“The fact that there was no death as a result of a fire in such a large area means two things. One is that it was not a spontaneous big fire but it started slowly before spreading. It must have spread because, as is standard in the industry, evacuation and ensuring nobody was caught up in the inferno took precedence over everything else, probably allowing the fire to grow,” observed one source.

EAC’s airports have not had any fire incidents in the recent past. In Kigali, the only time the airport was put to the test was when RwandAir flight WB205 smashed into the VIP lounge at high-speed in 2009. The 50-seater Canadian Regional Jet-100 series developed a technical problem shortly after takeoff from Kigali International Airport forcing the captain to make an emergency landing at the airport.