PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Air Sea Rescue video - RACQ Careflight Helicopter
Old 30th Jan 2008, 19:47
  #32 (permalink)  
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Topendtorque - firstly SAR and EMS are completely different animals and whilst extensive risk reduction is fine in EMS, risk management is the norm in SAR. The difficulty in trying to make hard and fast rules is that they are inflexible and therefore useless.

Imagine the risk to a colleague of mine and his crew when they hovertaxied in cloud and in the dark with a very poor NVG picture up the side of a mountain to reach a casualty - then hovertaxied back down to cloudbreak and flew to hospital. The casualty would have died if left on the mountain but the crew's daring and skill saved her life. This is where the risk averse start muttering about health and safety, blundering in and crashing around everywhere (PODustdevil). The fact is, if you are very well trained and have good CRM and risk assessment skills - you are already someway to mitigating the risk of the operation as you are going in with eyes wide open and aware of all the possible dangers. This is professional SAR.

If the TV report about being at the extreme of range and only having minimal time on scene (14 secs is about the time it takes to establish a briefing position ready for the lift) is to be believed, then it means they were taking far more risks for far less benefit - the guy wasn't going to die from his injuries if basic first aid was given. I suspect there may be some poetic licence in the TV report.

However I haven't stopped laughing at the notion his patter was some linguistic idiom....they saved all that for the extensive use of 'mate' after they were clear of the deck.

Blue rotor - another fine example of someone who has nothing to offer the topic other than personal abuse
crab@SAAvn.co.uk is offline