My experience with the fall of Vietman and a number of natural disasters reinforces my belief that man made disasters are just as devastating as natural disasters. 

Vietman was a long, protracted War that resulted in the Republic of South Vietman being conquered by North Vietman. The devastating affects that the final end of the war had on the entire population of South Vietman can only be described as horrific, equal to histories worst natural disaster. In just a couple of days, many people were killed, injured, displaced and separated from families and friends. The country’s economy and infrastructure were destroyed. Because of the event’s political nature, countries that would have otherwise come to their aid for humanitarian reasons, refuse to extend any sort of assistance. The volatility of the political situation coupled with the ignorance of the majority of the conquerers sent the country development back more than a 100 years. 

Many people fled the country in every imaginable method. In the first 24 hours, the biggest issue that neighboring countries had to deal with was the sudden influx of numerous aircraft all trying to land at a few airfields. I was operating from one of these airfields the day the exodus began.  

Many of these airfields were ill equipped to deal the volume of aircraft that descended on them almost simultaneously, and the physical size and number of aircraft that had to be dealt with once on the ground. 

Many of the air and ground controllers could not communicate with the pilots (in some cases a very loose association of the title) due to either language or equipment issues. i.e. either no radio, inoperative radio or equipment that would not communicate with the airfield’s radios. This created numerous coordination problems in the airfield’s traffic pattern that fortunately only resulted in a number of close calls, but no mid-airs. 

Next, aircraft in the pattern began to run out of fuel. Declaring a low fuel state was ignored due to the number of aircraft who’s engines had already begun to shut down do to fuel exhaustion. This caused a number of aircraft to simultaneously be landing on the taxiways while other aircraft were landing on the runways. A number of smaller aircraft landed in the grassy area between the runway and the taxiway at the same time. 

Once on the ground, the taxiways and parking aprons became clogged with aircraft. The ground controllers suffered from the same communications problems and soon the airfield was littered with aircraft everywhere. The primary mission of the ground personal then became keeping the airfield open for those aircraft still waiting to land. 

Once the aircraft were stopped, security and control of the occupants became the next nightmare. Troops had to be rushed to the airfield to contain our new “guests” from leaving the airfield. 

The next issue was billeting and food. This was no small task, as there were hundreds of arriving people and absolutely no facilities available to house and feed them. Temporary shelters had to be set up, along with messing facilities and a field hospital to care for a number of people who had been wounded or injured during their escape.  

The fact that no aircraft crashed in and around the airfield was a minor miracle. The only ground accident was when two aircraft touched wing tips while being taxied into parking spots. Now of our new guests were injured during the entire day.

After 24 hours, only a few aircraft additional aircraft escaped and the entire event became a refugee issue.