Making Every Minute Count: The Northern Virginia Emergency Response System’s Response to the January 2025 Plane Crash at Reagan National Airport

Arlington, Virginia  
January 29, 2025

On the night of January 29, 2025, the unthinkable happened – a commercial flight carrying 64 passengers and crew members collided mid-air with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter carrying three service members. The collision occurred at 8:47 PM over the freezing Potomac River. At 8:50 PM, just three minutes after the collision, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority’s Fire and Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Department was already on the phone with the Northern Virginia Emergency Response System (NVERS), the health care coalition (HCC) that serves the Northern Virginia region

NVERS is an HCC that receives funding from ASPR’s Hospital Preparedness Program (HPP). With HPP support, HCCs establish response partner networks, build preparedness plans, and conduct trainings and exercises, all of which save time and lives in an emergency response. In Virginia, each HCC has a Regional Healthcare Coordination Center that acts as a single point of contact for emergency coordination of the health care sector and response partners. Each coalition has a 24/7 staffed hotline for its partners to call during an emergency, activating the Regional Healthcare Coordination Center. 

As an HCC, NVERS takes a community approach to preparedness, partnering with traditional health care and emergency response entities, as well as those community partners outside of health care such as law enforcement, information technology offices, and 911 operators. Upon receiving the hotline call from Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority’s Fire and EMS Department, NVERS activated its Regional Healthcare Coordination Center. Through its Regional Healthcare Coordination Center, NVERS began establishing and maintaining direct communication between on-scene fire, EMS, hospitals, and local, regional, and state public health and emergency support functions.  

By 8:52 PM, NVERS had assembled incident management team staff and activated the emergency alarms on its NVERS Radio system. The coalition had used HPP funding to equip every hospital and freestanding emergency department in the region with these NVERS Radios, intended to improve communication and coordination during an emergency. Thanks to this system, NVERS rapidly notified emergency departments of the disaster, prompting them to provide critical hospital capacity information to support response efforts. 

Since the crash occurred in the National Capital Region, which includes Washington, D.C. and surrounding areas in Maryland and Virginia, the response required clear coordination of all operations across multiple jurisdictions and their respective agencies. In the years leading up to the response, NVERS collaborated with National Capital Region HCC staff in the District of Columbia and Maryland Region 5 to develop a suite of National Capital Region-specific plans that outline a coordinated approach to burn, trauma, and pediatric emergencies, as well as information sharing across the region. The information sharing plan outlines specific triggers and processes for notifying HCCs and their partners across the region so that there is clear and consistent situational awareness of events that have the potential to impact the entire National Capital Region. This plan enables HCC members to connect patients with the closest and most appropriate care during a disaster.

By 9:00 PM, all 30 NVERS hospital partners used the Virginia Healthcare Alerting and Status System to provide real-time information on their emergency department bed availability. Simultaneously, NVERS issued a text alert to promptly notify non-hospital partners including public health, emergency management, EMS, and other regional partners, such as the District of Columbia Health and Medical Coalition, of the crash. NVERS’ swift efforts to communicate and coordinate with partners streamlined potential patient routing and resource allocation efforts across the region. 

During a response, HCCs such as NVERS serve a critical coordination role by maintaining clear and centralized communication between all parties. As the central point of contact, NVERS received frequent updates from the team at the scene of the crash and passed key information along to health care and emergency response partners. For example, the Defense Health Agency at Fort Belvoir, one of NVERS’ partners, called the coalition’s hotline requesting support identifying where the helicopter involved had originated. NVERS contacted the response team at the scene and confirmed that the helicopter had originated at Fort Belvoir, all within five minutes. 

By 9:47 PM, the on-scene team contacted NVERS requesting temporary mortuary storage services that could be transported to the scene. In just seven minutes, NVERS identified an HPP-funded fatality management trailer located an hour away from the scene. Without hesitation, one of NVERS’ health system members in that area deployed a team to bring the trailer to the scene. Familiar with the traffic that occurs at all hours in the National Capital Region, NVERS mitigated any potential delays by coordinating with Virginia State Police to arrange a law enforcement escort of the fatality management trailer. 
 

Tragically, later that evening, the on-scene team notified NVERS that there were likely no survivors, and the response shifted to recovery. Despite the tragic outcome, the response demonstrated the value of NVERS’ robust regional planning and extensive multi-disciplinary, multi-jurisdictional relationships. This response served as a real-world test of NVERS' capabilities, proving that a well-prepared coalition makes every minute count when time is of the essence.

Learn more about how other ASPR programs supported the aircraft collision at Reagan National Airport.