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Airport firefighters to get training after tarmac death of China's Ye Mengyuan

Chinese girl survived crash of airliner in San Francisco, but was killed by fire trucks

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Ye Mengyuan. Photo: AP

Firefighters who work at San Francisco International Airport are receiving additional training on how to respond to air crashes after the Asiana Airlines accident in which a teenage girl from China was run over and killed by two emergency vehicles while lying injured on the runway.

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Commanding officers from the San Francisco Fire Department's airport division would receive 40 to 80 hours of advanced instruction next year at the Fire Training Research Centre at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, the reported.

Federal rules require all rank-and-file firefighters assigned to US airports to have disaster-response training. Before the July 6 crash, the San Francisco Fire Department had its own in-house training programme, but the three commanders in charge of the crash of the South Korean airliner had never undergone it, according to the .

"There are many lessons to be learned here," Assistant Deputy Chief Dale Carnes, who oversees the department's airport division, said during a National Transportation Safety Board hearing on Wednesday where he announced the changes.

One of the three Chinese teenagers who died in the accident was a 16-year-old girl who survived the crash but became covered in firefighting foam and was run over by two fire trucks as she lay hurt on the runway.

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Documents revealed that Ye Mengyuan was struck twice - once by a fire rig spraying foam and again 11 minutes later by a second truck that was turning around to fetch water.

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