Looking over copies of last week's Daily Herald, I saw an article reporting that the island doctor who requested the evac attended the patient on the ferry to SXM. I presume that had the heli come, he would have gone over in the fourth seat.
I don't read the DH regularly. Has anyone in our area who does read it seen any follow up articles? Or opinion letters? Any calls for an investigation?
LOL, I'll answer my own post since yesterday's SXM
Daily Herald did have an article and an editorial. For those of you still following the story, here is the editorial:
"
After the Crash
For several days after the Robinson R44 helicopter in which Windward Islands Police Chief Inspector Alfred 'Churchill' Marsdin and his pilot friend and business partner Michael Huttenlocker disappeared from the radar at Princess Juliana International Airport and apparently crashed into the sea, this newspaper tried to talk with senior officials of the Civil Aviation Department in Curacao about the incident, but kept drawing blanks.
Our luck improved yesterday when one of our reporters managed to get a telephone interview with Directorate of Civil Aviation Director Siegfried Francisco. For that we thank Mr Francisco, but we find it very disconcerting that in the year 2008 as St Maarten prepares for separate country status there was no senior Civil Aviation official based in St Maarten whom the island's leading newspaper could have contacted for answers to some very basic, but persistent questions.
Equally disconcerting - and inexcusable - is the fact that, to the best of our knowledge, the first official squeaks from the relevant authorities about a helicopter crash in which two persons are believed to have to perished were not uttered until more than a week after said crash.
The result is that even as you read this, very few of the million and one questions being raised by the public have been answered by officialdom, but are out there living a life of their own, serving as grist for the rumour mill, so that it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate fact from fiction and rumour.
In our less-than-300-word story based on the interview with Mr Francisco, published elsewhere in today's newspaper, the public learns that the Directorate of Civil Aviation will be submitting a preliminary report on the incident to the Aviation Supervisory Committee, which will do further investigative work before deciding what to do with the report, which usually would be submitted to the Minister responsible for Civil Aviation.
Based on the interview, it is very evident that the Civil Aviation establishment in the Netherlands Antilles is under-equipped and woefully understaffed. As a consequence, it cannot be a happy camper as it tries to police the relevant standards and regulations. It is also evident that the full amplitude of that inadequacy manifests itself in St Maarten.
Mr Francisco quite correctly points out that accidents happen in aviation all over the world, notwithstanding precautions taken. We agree with him too that it is his directorate's responsibility to investigate 'what may have been the cause' of the October 22 accident and learn from it so that they can prevent similar accidents from happening. Our hope is that that investigation, though seemingly somewhat narrow, will be conducted expeditiously and will be very thorough. We also hope the report and its findings will be made public.
Finally, we hope there will be a much wider investigation into the overall civil aviation operations in St Maarten, taking into account all relevant issues that predated the crash.
Frankly, we are of the view that, given St Maarten's avid pursuit of separate status, a report on such an investigation covering most of those issues should have been compiled already and should now be a much-sought-after file in the 'In' trays on quite a few senior officials' desks.
Our primary interest in this matter is that St Maarten should not be condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past."
##