I can only praise the pilot willingness to help others but such missions are for pros and using appropiate helicopters.
Does the local goverment there has no such Emergency program?
Why let a private citizen to carry such suicide mission?
Both rest in peace.
Furia and All,
These are important questions and they deserve answers. As the guy who wrote most of the CRM and some of the safety standards for CAMTS, I had no idea aviation standards are so lax here. But living here now and interacting with our own island government, I'm not at all surprised. To say that most things here in the West Indies are unregulated is an eye-rolling understatement. Yet to be honest, when it doesn't involve safety and health, it's actually pretty refreshing.
Yes, there are Emergency plans when it comes to hurricanes, because after 400 years of hurricanes, governments here have HAD to produce them, and the hurricane emergency plan on my island, although relatively new, is excellent. But I'm not optimistic -although I will personally pursue it with our island governor and island secretary this week- that anyone in either the SXM or SAB governments will sense any urgency to address airevac safety issues even after this tragedy. As a point of reference, on Saba we still burn all refuse in the dump (garbage, plastic bottles, old washing machines, abandoned automobiles, etc) into the open air while the island elementary and high schools are downwind less than a quarter mile away! Lots of talk about correcting this shameful health issue - little if any action. So this is what we are dealing with.
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