SMITHFIELD - The call came in last Wednesday afternoon: The landing gear had failed on a plane approaching the Johnston County Airport. Fire and rescue personnel from across central Johnston scrambled to the airport as the plane circled overhead.

When the Beechcraft Super King Air 200 touched down in a rough, unsteady landing, fire trucks and ambulances were at its side within seconds.

No one was hurt, and the plane suffered little damage. And even if there had been a fire or injury, firefighters and medics would have been able to react in seconds.

But if a beleaguered plane were to abort takeoff or overshoot the local airport's 5,500-foot runway, rescue crews might have to brave a steep slope or even a water hazard.

"Theoretically, if someone were to overshoot runway 0-3, they would be down in the Reedy Branch," said airport director Ray Blackmon.

As soon as next year, though, a new safety zone beyond the tip of the runway will provide an extra cushion for landing and departing planes. The federally mandated project will create a flat, sodded zone at the end of the runway that will measure 1,000 feet long by 500 feet wide.

"They'll have an area they can overrun to so emergency vehicles and personnel can get to them," Blackmon said.

Creating a safety zone is a simple affair for airports that are surrounded by level ground. Not so here.

One of the project's engineers told Blackmon that the airport was built on "one of the worst places you can find," thanks to the 40-foot drop from the end of the runway to nearby Reedy Branch.

The project, which will cost about $6.6 million, will require extensive terrain work and the construction of concrete culverts. The Federal Aviation Administration will fund 90 percent of the project, but Johnston County must come up with a $660,000 match.

The county has until 2015 to comply with the new safety-zone rules. If it doesn't, the FAA could carve the safety zone out of the existing tarmac, essentially reducing the runway's length by a fifth.

"Many business jets would likely elect to go somewhere else" if that happened, Blackmon told County Commissioners last week.

Fortunately, the runway improvements have been in the works for years. Unfortunately, the county didn't budget any money for the work this year.

"It didn't look like [the project] was going to happen because of the issues that we had," Blackmon said. But over the summer, after the county adopted its budget, the airport found traction, finally making progress with a bevy of agency reviews.

"Lo and behold, here we are in August and we find out it's approved," County Manager Rick Hester said at the meeting last week.

Construction could now begin early next year. To finance the project, County Commissioners agreed to the idea of taking a loan from the Airport Authority to pay the county's share.

Early bidding by contractors has already come in 30 percent below expected, Blackmon said. Environmental studies, meanwhile, have found the project will have no significant impact on the ecosystem beyond the runway, he said.

Between 1983 and 2006 in the United States, 43 fatal airplane crashes resulted from runway overruns, according to Sen. Frank Lautenberg, who pushed the new safety-zone regulation.