Air Zermatt and other HEMS respond to Crans Montana

[chopper2004]

I'd like to say Happy New Year All but for the peeps inside the night club in Crans Montana it was not I did notice in the tabloids appearance of local HEMS Airbus H135 responding then came across Air Zermatt press release below

https://www.air-zermatt.ch/de/news/t...saufgebot--536

So they scrambled Bell 429 from their Gampel base thereafter a/c from their main base at Zermatt itself plus Raron

Speedy recovery to the surviving victims and RIP those who died.

[twinstar_ca]

So sad....
Bravo Zulu to all responders, both ground and air...

[ApolloHeli]

Rega sent 8 helicopters + some Challenger jets to assist as well. By all means a massive coordinated effort in response to an overwhelming tragedy.

[KiwiNedNZ]

13 HEMS machines and they also moved patients outside Switzerland as apparently all burns beds in the hospitals in the country are now full. Pretty massive effort by everyone involved.

[HEMS chap]

Couldn't agree more, sadly as with every event of this nature we all find ourselves thinking how would we respond to that level in this/our country... could we cope? are we able to. Unfortunately I can't think off the top of my head a country that hasn't had event that made us all sit up and think..... er if that happened here today how would we respond.

[Lonewolf_50]

Nobody learns.

On the evening of February 20, 2003, a fire occurred at The Station, a nightclub and music venue in West Warwick, Rhode Island, United States, killing 100 people and injuring 230. During a concert by the rock band Jack Russell's Great White, an offshoot of the original Great White band, a pyrotechnic display ignited flammable acoustic foam in the walls and ceilings surrounding the stage. Within six minutes, the entire building was engulfed in flames. The fire remains the deadliest firework accident in U.S. history and the fourth-deadliest nightclub fire in U.S. history. It was also the second-deadliest nightclub fire in New England, behind the 1942 Cocoanut Grove fire.

As an aside: there's a lyric from a song by Deep Purple in their song "Smoke on the Water" that described a fire in Switzerland a bit over 54 years ago.
Some stupid with a flare gun.

On December 4th, 1971, During a performance by Frank Zappa and the Mothers in Lake Geneva Switzerland, a fan fired a flare gun and caught the hall on fire. The casino at Montreux burned down, destroy all the equipment. The event was immortalized by Deep Purple in the song "Smoke On The Water".

I tip my chapeau to those helicopter professionals who came to assist. Well done!

Originally Posted by KiwiNed

13 HEMS machines and they also moved patients outside Switzerland as apparently all burns beds in the hospitals in the country are now full. Pretty massive effort by everyone involved.

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[atakacs]

There have been a massive and well coordinated effort, including Italian choppers that ended up too heavy to land on the Swiss hospital helipads...
Still, overall a remarkable effort

[KiwiNedNZ]

Originally Posted by atakacs

There have been a massive and well coordinated effort, including Italian choppers that ended up too heavy to land on the Swiss hospital helipads...
Still, overall a remarkable effort

Question on that - in a dire emergency like this could you land on the pad but stay light on skids and unload or not possible ?

[helispotter]

Originally Posted by KiwiNedNZ

Question on that - in a dire emergency like this could you land on the pad but stay light on skids and unload or not possible ?

I was thinking similar. However surely they would also have alternate landing locations on solid ground near these hospitals with a short transfer using a regular ambulance?

In my home city, the main hospital has rooftop pad but when multiple helicopters are operating to the hospital, they have also used a nearby oval to land.

Addition: For flight decks on ships, the structure of the deck isn't only designed to deal with static weight of the helicopter, but dynamic loads due to unplanned hard landings. At one point "oleo ultimate load" was used as the basis for flight deck structural design, and at least one manufacturer had super strong oleos! Not sure of basis for design of civil engineering heli deck structures.

[magyar_flyer]

Originally Posted by KiwiNedNZ

Question on that - in a dire emergency like this could you land on the pad but stay light on skids and unload or not possible ?

That what they end up doing, at least in Geneva.
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