They are known as the "guns and hoses" crew, and they are the approximately 600 Port Authority of New York and New Jersey police officers at the region's three major airports who are trained as firefighters to respond to emergencies involving airplanes on the runways.

Yesterday, the authority's commissioners voted to enhance the officers' training with a $6 million full- size model of a Boeing 757 fuselage that can be used to simulate internal fires, like those in the cockpit, cargo hold, kitchen area and wheel wells of aircraft. The new equipment will supplement the agency's existing simulator for exterior fires — a 125- foot, rock-lined pit in the northeast corner of Kennedy International Airport whose bottom is honeycombed with a network of computer-controlled, stove-like pilot lights that can shoot flames as high as 30 feet and simulate a fuel spill fire.

Noting that fighting airplane fires is "a unique skill requiring unique training equipment," the Port Authority chairman, Jack G. Sinagra, said that the new simulator would allow training for 13 additional fire situations.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/15/nyregion/15POR.html