Merged: Close Essendon Airport!

[John Eacott]

FFS, what planet is Brumby on? Does he really think that Lindsay is spending all those $$$$$$ on infrastructure at EN to see it knocked down because of Labor Party 'policy' If Brumby thinks that sort of approach will swell the coffers with Donations from Linfox, he's even more stupid than he looks

Drive around EN tomorrow, and look at the new hangars, offices, roads, etc. LF didn't get his $billions by putting that sort of dosh into a lost cause

[Capt Wally]

Just as another slant on it John maybe, just maybe good 'ole Mr Fox ('cunning' name hey?) would like to see the place close down, as in the flying side of it in the future. Then he & Becton group I think it is would have a 99 yr lease in total on very prime real estate returning huge sums of money that perhaps might not have been allowable/achievable if it where not an airport in the first place? Either way Mr Fox will be very pleased in the end I believe. And I'm talking about 10 yrs to close the place down as far as planes go anyway & that to him (Mr Fox due his current age) is a long time ! Just thinking out loud, where highly influential businessmen & the Govt are involved (as we saw during WW3) there would be much 'sus' dealings I'd say! Something is not quite right there, time shall tell all am sure

CW

p.s...........Brumby? put a red nose on him dress him in a funny suit & you have the ideal CLOWN !

[airtags]

Agree John
it was a stupid pitch from Brumby although to be fair he is only echoing the mindless meanderings of two Permanent Heads of Dept and a few of their inept party prefered flunkies who blindly believe that the Melbourne 2030 plan is the universal saviour for our over governed city.

Melbourne 2030 itself is a flawed academic concept that fails to make the link between infrastructure and economic growth. In terms of 2030, EN is a sideline issue that barely rates a mention -

Spring Street should be more concerrned with sound planning and consider the integration of transport nodes with supply chain/DC development [as demonstrated by other states and even Local councils eg., Albury's integration of road/rail to facilitate Woolworths DC & the resultant agglomerated development.]

EN is prime located infrastructure whose environs have been eroded by successive poor planning decisions and short term politics.

Sadly to be successful in politics you need a firm robust opinion but to be really successful you need to be able to change it often - this 'annoucement' by Brumby is nothing more than a 'position' test for pending elections and a means by which leverage support from a faction within the local council (which quite coincidently has an election shortly)

AT

[Teal]

Finally...some serious media coverage about the push to save the airport:

Save Essendon Airport Group counters community opposition | The Australian

Save Essendon Airport Group counters community opposition

Steve Creedy, Aviation writer | September 12, 2008

A NEW group has launched a website, advertising campaign and petition aimed at saving Melbourne's Essendon Airport.
The Save Essendon Airport Group aims to counter recent moves by community activists from nearby suburbs to force the airport's closure.
The Close Essendon Airport campaign has called on the federal Government to oppose plans to expand corporate jet flights and develop new hangars. It argues public health and safety are at risk.
But the Save Essendon Airport Group says the airport, north of Melbourne central business district, serves a vital function as home to Victoria's air ambulance fleet, the Victoria Police Air Wing and fire-fighting aircraft.
They say the airport is a link to regional destinations and a convenient gateway to the city for business people.
They also argue that alternatives such as Moorabbin and Avalon are too far away and that shifting traffic from Essendon to Melbourne Airport would result in delays to passenger jets.
The group has already launched newspaper advertisements to support their argument, has a radio campaign poised to go and is looking at television campaigns.
Spokesman Lincoln Robinson said airport supporters had been discussing ways of counteracting pressure from their opponents for some time.
He said a rally last month had provided the final motivation. He was incensed by claims that the airport was dangerous.
Mr Robinson said the airport was established in 1922, long before residents moved in, and incidents quoted as evidence of the danger of an aircraft hitting a residential area were more than eight years apart.
"In relation to accidents, pollution and noise, there's more on the Tullamarine freeway," Mr Robinson said. "And Essendon Airport has a curfew."
Mr Robinson said the group would not be protesting in person but would work in the background to counter the Close Essendon Airport campaign.
"This group's out there saying it's dangerous and everything but there's not... a group out there that's doing the media and doing the other side of the argument and getting other facts out there," he said. "That's what we aim to do."
Mr Robinson was reluctant to say who was funding the campaign but said it was backed by "individuals putting in money" rather than companies.
He said regional carrier Sharp Airlines, which flies three times a day to the airport and is mentioned on the group's website, was not a financial backer.
But the new group may be fighting an uphill battle.
The Victorian Government told its federal counterpart in its submission to the federal aviation white paper that it expected Essendon to be closed "in the medium term".
This is despite a decision to build more air ambulance facilities there in the short term.
The submission said the airport had already been constrained by residential development early last century that had resulted in curfews.
"In this context, Melbourne 2030 recognises the current role of Essendon Airport in providing specialised functions related to aviation, freight and logistics, but notes that in the medium term this facility should be closed as an airport and transformed into a significant employment and residential precinct," it said.
This week, Victorian Premier John Brumby reaffirmed this was still government policy. "It (the submission) repeats almost verbatim that the Government's policy is that in the medium to longer term, Essendon Airport should be closed, and that has been the consistent view of the Government," he told the Victorian parliament.
Victorian Nationals leader Peter Ryan condemned the plan as a disgrace.
"Mr Brumby's confirmation that Labor will seek to close the airport 'in the medium term' will come as a blow to the aviation community who use the facility and the workers who are employed there," he said.
"This will also shock country and regional communities for whom Essendon Airport is a vital transit point in and out of Melbourne."
Mr Ryan said the airport had a rich history and had welcomed Charles Kingsford Smith, the Queen and the Beatles.
But it was the airport's present role that justified its retention. Numerous operators relied on it to provide charter and freight services and flying schools trained there.
The Save Essendon Airport Group's website is www.save essendonairport.com.au

[kreugers]

maybe good 'ole Mr Fox ('cunning' name hey?) would like to see the place close down, as in the flying side of it in the future.

Too right Wally. A source tells me he was lobbying the State Government about 6 yrs ago trying to have the aviation side moved to the old Laverton AFB and when that wasn't likely, Point Cook. May yet happen, although with 3000 houses approved for the northern boundary of YMPC and RWY 04/22 lighting now DCMSD, it's also on its last legs.

[B123456789]

YMEN

Save Essendon Airport. The petition is going well. Keep up the good work.

[Jet Crew]

Good on you guys !!

I noticed the petition is up to 349

[Teal]

From today's Weekly Times (online). Put this in your diaries if you can attend.

Essendon Airport supporters to meet
Lyndal Reading, October 7, 2008

SUPPORTERS of Essendon Airport will hold a public meeting to pressure the State and Federal Governments to leave the airport open.
Victorian Nationals leader Peter Ryan will address the public meeting, to be held at the main terminal on Friday, October 17 at 3pm.
The Save Essendon Airport Group is concerned about the future of the air ambulance and fire fighting appliances based at Essendon if the airport were to close.
The group has also raised concerns about the future of regional air services based at Essendon airport.
During the past month more than 640 people have signed an online petition of support for the group.

More information from the Save Essendon Airport Group website. (And please sign the petition if you haven't already done so).

Save Essendon Airport

Regards

T

[Capt Wally]

It's great to see/read some positive actions being taken to stop the few who think that EN is a threat to their idilic like in the burbs!

I'll bare my A** in the middle of Swanston St (in ML) if they close EN within 5 yrs, more like 10 yrs but ya never know the slimy pollies (''Dumby" for Eg) might have some clout over time.


CW

[Jet Crew]

Just looking at the TV news video on the website, seems like it would shut down Sharp Airlines. watch the video here

[FFG 02]

It is a lengthy article but hopefully puts a positive spin on the services located at Essendon.

From here to emergency: saving lives on the move | theage.com.au

However, maybe this is what the "Close Essendon Airport brigade because I want my property values to go up" need to read.

PETER Norton doesn't remember arriving at Stawell Hospital, so he can't say why he carefully pulled his blue-green Falcon into a space in the car park instead of driving straight to the emergency department door. Probably because it seemed the right thing to do.

It was 9.45am.ASSOCIATE unit manager Di Perry saw him coming. He was thick set with a full beard and in clear distress. He couldn't talk, only signal, and when she looked into his throat she saw why. His uvula, the grape of flesh dangling at the back of his mouth, was red and horribly swollen.

Ms Perry called Dr John Osborne-Rigby, the on-call emergency physician, at the Stawell Medical Centre. He was at the hospital in three minutes.

Peter, 51, appeared to have epiglottitis, a rare infection of the cartilage at the opening of the windpipe. His enlarged uvula was flopping backwards and forwards at the base of his tongue.

"It was a giant sort of thing. Inflamed and bloody-looking," says Dr Osborne-Rigby. "I've not seen one as big and fat and juicy as that thing for — well, ever."

They got Peter to the resuscitation room and injected him with antibiotics and steroids and put him on an adrenalin nebuliser to shrink the blood vessels. But nothing seemed to work. If the swelling worsened it would choke off his airway and he could die.

He needed to be intubated — to have a flexible plastic tube pushed down his trachea to provide mechanical ventilation — and he needed to have the procedure urgently.

Ms Perry called in anaesthetist Dr Adnan Rasheed, who was in the hospital working on the theatre list. Addi, as he is known by his colleagues, is small, gentle and — usually — softly spoken. Then he saw his patient.

"And it was 'Oh, ****!"' he says. "That was my first impression, but I couldn't show it on my face because as an anaesthetist you must be the last person to stress… He was in a mess. He was a very difficult case."

Peter had a short, thick bull neck, a characteristic dreaded by anaesthetists because it makes intubation difficult. His epiglottis and uvula were so enlarged, Dr Rasheed could not see past to his airway. He was aspirating muck into his lungs and even without X-rays it was clear he had pneumonia.

Worse, the 35-bed country hospital did not have the fibre-optical equipment needed to see behind the blockage so they could position the tube. Dr Rasheed called in surgeon Ben Yokhanis, in case it was necessary to perform an emergency tracheostomy, cutting a hole directly into Peter's windpipe.

"His life was in danger," Dr Rasheed says. "It's a matter of hours or minutes, who knows? His throat is so badly swollen if it closes and he can't breathe, it's life-threatening. And he was heading towards that."

It was time to seek outside help.

It was 10.25am.WHEN the phone rang in the couple of offices that is Adult Retrieval Victoria, based in the Metropolitan Ambulance Service building in South Melbourne, it set off a series of communications like a string of firecrackers. Each was aimed at saving the life of Peter Norton, 240 kilometres away.

Every week the service takes almost 50 similar calls. Around half of them set in train the same chain of medical and logistical operations that were now focusing on Peter.

Adult retrieval is a 24/7 lifeline to time-critical and critically ill patients and their doctors throughout the state. It has brought an equity of care to all Victorians. A single phone call can result in expert advice and assistance and, where necessary, retrieval by air or road of such patients and their transfer to a high-end unit at a Melbourne or major regional hospital.

Each patient is collected and accompanied by specialised teams of clinicians and paramedics.

The improved service began in November last year with the transfer of an existing retrieval service into the Metropolitan Ambulance Service. It has seen the system streamlined and made more service- and community-focused, says its director, Dr Marcus Kennedy. Within its first six months, the rate of retrievals doubled to about 520 — exactly the number of retrievals in the entire 2006-07 financial year — but as the result of only slightly more calls to the service.

"If you look at one thing that's made a monumental difference, it's by implementing a state-of-the-art communications capacity, which is all through being part of ambulance," he says.

Under the previous system calls would go through the St Vincent's Hospital switchboard and be channelled to a co-ordinator working on a mobile phone. Now, using a single statewide 1300 number, all calls go through the ambulance service's communications system and the adult retriever's call takers.

"Any time a referring doctor rings they'll be put on to a co-ordinator within two or three minutes," says Dr Kennedy.

"We can conference six or eight conversations at any one time with half a dozen people on them if we need to. Literally what happens is the hospital will ring us, give us the clinical information, and we'll provide them with immediate clinical advice at a high level.

"But we'll then leave them to look after the patient while we find a critical care bed, organise a platform — an aircraft or a vehicle — and get a retrieval physician or a MICA paramedic organised to get out there and get them. They really just need to ring us, hand it over, and we do the rest."

So when Dr Osborne-Rigby phoned at 10.25, he was patched through to the service's co-ordinator Dr Andre Vanzyl. They discussed Peter's symptoms and difficulties. At 10.32 the first calls went out looking for an intensive care bed. The service does three ring-arounds each day — at 11am, 6pm and midnight — to keep tabs on bed availability across the state, and things were tight. Bendigo was first port of call, but had nothing.

But whatever happened, Peter would have to be moved. Stawell Hospital does not have the capacity to keep a patient on mechanical ventilation. At 11.12 Adult Retrieval called the Air Ambulance Base at Essendon to check if a plane was available.

It was 11.25am.JACK Spencer was in the right place at the right time. A long-time senior emergency physician at The Alfred hospital, Dr Spencer has been one of the pool of 25 retrieval physicians for the past six years. But he has been doing retrievals, here and overseas, since he was a registrar.

"It's probably the great variety and almost the challenge of sometimes thinking outside the box," he says. "Saying, 'How the hell am I going to get this person with that condition from here to there. Can I do it?"'

But this Tuesday he was filling in, swapping the on-call shift with a colleague who had a funeral to attend. And, by coincidence, he was at an information session for Adult Retrieval staff at Essendon airport, directly across Nomad Road from the Air Ambulance, when his mobile rang. He crossed the bitumen, pulled on a blue flight suit and called Stawell.

Dr Rasheed told him he had made two attempts to get a tube in but had failed because of the upper airway obstruction. "That got me a little bit anxious," says Dr Spencer. He thought they'd needed to go to theatre for an emergency tracheostomy.

At Stawell, Autumn Brearley-Norton was more than a bit anxious. She paced outside the curtains of the resuscitation room listening to and catching glimpses of the drama within. She'd been called at her new job around 10.15. When she'd arrived Peter had been on the nebuliser mask.

He couldn't talk but scrawled a single-word note. It read: "Settlement?" and it took a moment to work out. She and Peter had bought a house after moving from Canberra at the end of July and settlement was due soon. She told him that was the least of his concerns and he wrote another note. It said "Sorrrrrry".

They'd been married for 13 years, the second time around for each. Peter was quiet, almost shy, and hated to inconvenience anyone. But he was giving the staff at Stawell plenty of work.

The Emergency Department there is not manned. When an urgent case comes in, responders are drawn from throughout the hospital. To care for Peter, the theatre list had been closed and nurses had been pulled from the wards. As well as the three doctors and Di Perry, unit manager Betty Newman, a theatre nurse, and a recording nurse had been called in, and Enid Smith, deputy director of clinical services, was overseeing them all and doing her best to comfort Autumn.

As time progressed, Dr Rasheed was worried at the failure to intubate. He needed to see inside the airway beyond the blockage, but without a fibre optic bronchoscope, he would have to find an alternative. "It was Addi's idea to try to adapt a cystoscope," says Dr Osborne-Rigby, "and you really don't want to know where that one goes."

A cystoscope is used to look into the bladder. It was wonderful lateral thinking, but the instrument was too short to reach as far as it was needed and guide in a tube.

"In a situation where you're not winning, to save a life you'll try anything," says Dr Rasheed. "But now I was thinking, 'I've fired all my guns. What next?"'

It was 12.58pm.KYM Anquetil put the red and white Superking Air 200C on to the runway at Stawell and taxied in past a couple of brutal-looking crop-dusters. She'd been flying professionally for 18 years. For half that time she'd been with the Royal Flying Doctor Service, which contracts the planes and pilots to the Air Ambulance.

She liked the variety, challenge and the sometime drama of retrieval work. Such flights were classified Med One, with priority over all others. "You have a Qantas jumbo that's flown 15 hours from LA," she says. "But if we're up, too bad, they might have to wait another 15 minutes."

She'd taken off from Essendon at exactly midday, with Dr Spencer and MICA paramedic Neil Burden. An ambulanceman for 33 years, he'd started with the Air Ambulance in 1993. Now flight co-ordinator, he only gets to fly eight weeks in every year.

There was a taxi waiting to take the crew and three large bags of equipment to the hospital. They walked into the resuscitation bay about 1.08pm. Peter was sedated, paralysed and breathing through a tube. Dr Rasheed had finally managed to intubate him only three minutes before, using a laryngeal mask, which sits over the back of the throat.

"I was glad that God saved him from having his throat cut," he says. "Glad we'd maintained the airway, and very glad that as soon as I finished I saw the retrieval team. And you say, 'Oh yes. Thanks God'."

Peter was still in a rocky state, says Dr Spencer. His blood pressure was low and he gave him fluids and inotropic drugs to bolster it. He asked Dr Rasheed to put in an arterial line, had him catheterised to drain fluids and hooked up to an adrenalin infusion in case his blood pressure dropped again. He "shotgunned" him with antibiotics.

Now it was a matter of packaging him up. The hope with retrieval is to have to do next to nothing with the patient while they are in the confined space of the aircraft, says Dr Kennedy.

"They need to be tidy, all lines accessible, everything secure. At the end you want the patient tucked up like a baby in a bassinet with a little umbilical cord of support wires, pumps and stuff coming out of them."

"So now," said Dr Spencer about 1.50pm, "we'll just wrap him up and get out of Dodge — and go all the way to Dandenong." Adult Retrieval had found a free intensive care bed at Dandenong Hospital.

The staff at Stawell were not sorry to see them go, but glad they'd been there. "Retrieval is such a great facility," says Dr Osborne-Rigby. "It's a terribly stressful situation when you're up in a place like this by yourself and to have someone taking care of the organisation, final beds and bits and pieces, it takes a big weight off."

It is also about equity of access, he says. There is a vast gap between metropolitan and rural Victorians in their access to high-end health care. Adult Retrieval helps bridge the gap.

It was 3.35pm.THE Superking touched down at Moorabbin where an ambulance was waiting. The 70-minute flight had been largely uneventful, but there had been moments of worry on the tarmac at Stawell. The machine monitoring Peter's breathing had begun emitting a series of alarming beeps.

The cuff, a small balloon at the end of the endotracheal tube that seals the airway, had developed a leak and Dr Spencer had to keep blowing it up: "If the cuff had failed totally, we'd have been in a bit of a dodgy situation. I would have had to change the tube in-flight, which is not an, um, optimal situation. It would have been a bit sphincter-tightening, if I can put it that way."

It was another week before Peter came off artificial ventilation in the ICU at Dandenong. Staff there had to re-intubate him twice, a difficult process that had them in deep admiration of Dr Rasheed's ingenuity with the cystoscope, says associate unit manager Rose Jaspers.

Ear, nose and throat specialists had found that on top of the infection, Peter had undiagnosed sleep apnoea from a soft, floppy airway. "He had three things running against him: a difficult airway, the apnoea and the swollen uvula," says Ms Jaspers. "And all those things in the one area are not compatible with living."

It was two weeks before Autumn could take him back to Stawell. She'd driven home as the ambulance took Peter to the airstrip, to prepare for the longer drive to Dandenong. "Everyone was so good at the hospital, that it wasn't until I was home that it all sank in and I started to cry," she says. "That's when I thought, 'I almost lost him'."

Peter remembers next to none of it. The week of unconsciousness, the regime of drugs and perhaps a little lack of oxygen to the brain has left him "a little space cadet-ish", says Autumn.

But he's grateful and is talking of delivering cases of wine and boxes of chocolates to all involved.

"Aren't they amazing," he says. "Not only did they save my life, they did it all while I was taking it easy."

[The Mr Fixit]

First of all I lived under the flight paths of Essendon Airport for over 30 years and only ever saw one accident that involved the deaths of civilians.
I also lived there when then there was bugger all houses around it but in time because the land was cheap people bought up.
Now people say close it down so they can profit, it seems that the things Australians loathe the most they become when their profit/money is involved.

THIS IS ONLY ABOUT GREED, GREED AND GREED NOTHING MORE NOTHING LESS.
THIS IS NOT ABOUT ABOUT PUBLIC CONCERN, IF IT WAS THERE WOULD BE ACTUAL FACTS AND FIGURES OF NEAR MISSES, ACCIDENTS ETC PLASTERING THE NEWSPAPERS.
ALL I SEE IS PROFITMONGERING HOMEOWNERS AND POLITICIANS LINING THE STREETS IN PROTEST.
OH HOW THE ALMIGHTY DOLLAR PERVERTS THE SOUL

SHAME SHAME SHAME GREED GREED GREED

[Capt Wally]

'FFG' thnxs for posting that link, that's exactly what does go on quite a lot. I doubt sadly though that the Close Essendone Airport Action Group would nother read it in it's entirety or even comprehend the importance of it all, they have but one agender, to have EN closed, such stories will have little impact on their desires unfortunetly.
I've had 23 week prem twins onboard after an urgent flight, far more upsetting than any other story that could be told here, very sad indeed but these 'fools' would be as cold as the driven snow!

Bring it on I say, I would love to show up these fools for what they are trying to achieve, & for what? to have their homes values increase & or sleep better at night? It's enough to make a grown man puke
I think the bigger fools are the likes of "Dumby", pollies only do one thing exceptionally well, feather their own nests along the way!



CW



CW

[Jet Crew]

From Moonee Valley Leader

Essendon Airport friends fire up

THE Save Essendon Airport Campaign is gathering momentum with about 600 people signing an online petition. Supporters of Essendon Airport are meeting this week to hear Victorian National Party leader Peter Ryan speak about what his party would do to keep the airport open.
Despite opposing lobby groups locking horns over the airport’s future, a decision date remains elusive. Federal Transport Minister Anthony Albanese’s spokesman, Jeff Singleton, did not return the Leader’s phonecalls.
Save Essendon Airport Campaign member and Strathmore resident Kevin McGowan said the meeting was not designed to “gather the faithful” but to show there was support for the airport’s operation. “Those who would have the airport closed are only thinking of themselves,” Mr McGowan said.
“Given the other crowd has been jumping up and down, if those of us on the other side don’t say anything people might think no one wants it to stay open.
“The airport is a very important piece of infrastructure for Victoria and for our air ambulance and police air wing.” Close Essendon Airport Campaign group member and Niddrie resident Helen van den Berg said “only a few” of the names on the group’s online petition were people who lived in the local area.
“They have no right to dictate to us that we should live in a noisy environment with aviation gas pollution and an airport that isn’t safe,” Ms van den Berg said.
“We stand by our right to live in a clean, safe environment.”
Mr Ryan said he had heard the views of people around Victoria who wanted to keep the airport open and had raised it in Parliament.
The Save Essendon Airport Campaign meeting is on Friday, October 17, at 3pm at the Essendon Airport terminal building.

[A. Le Rhone]

If she wants to "live in a clean safe environment" why is she living next to a Freeway?

Perhaps Innaminka might be better.

The airport is a red-herring.

[Jet Crew]

The supporters meeting is tomorrow (Friday) at 3PM in the main passenger terminal, who is going?

I am.....

[Capt Wally]

Am keen to go also, am on night shift though but as long as you guys can put up with my snoring I ought to be there


CW

[Jet Crew]

CW

Look out mate the Close Essendon weirdo might put in a complaint that your snoring is to noisy!!

I have been doing some research on that women who is the "voice" of the close idiots and it seems she likes to get her nose in everything. She even tried to stick her nose into the desalination plant !!

God help us !

[Lasiorhinus]

I'll bring coffee, Wally, and if you fall asleep I'll poke you to wake you up!

[Capt Wally]

ok 'Las' ya gunna poke me hey?...........me thinks/hopes yr a sheila
Off flying right now so ya might have to jab me in the ribs to keep me awake!


CW