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Those Of You That Have Done Med-evacs: Advice And Tips?


Daz
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Hi all...

 

A little background... I'm a brand new "100-hour wonder" (just finished my CPL-H in January at Bighorn/Mountain View helicopters), and I'm also a long-time ski patroller at Panorama Mountain Village out by Invermere, BC.

 

Every season, we train our patrollers in on-hill med-evac procedures. RK Heli-Ski is right here on the resort, so it's usually Bruce from Elbow River with his 212 that we train with. About once every year or two we have an injury serious enough to warrant a heli-evac. Occasionally, we utilize their help in searching for missing skiers, which can involve us ski patrollers hot-loading and hover-exiting.

 

Anyways, for years, we've always been doing the same pre-briefing and orientation - which has always worked well. This year, I'm going to lead the orientation; as I'm an old ski patroller and a new pilot, it's something I wanna do.

 

Being a keener and all :D, I'm looking for any advice, tips, and anecdotes from any of you that have done med-evacs or search-and-rescues - anything to help update and advance our training. What do you like to see from the "rescuers"? What DON"T you like to see? Tell me your stories!

 

Cheers,

 

Darren

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Being a keener and all :D, I'm looking for any advice, tips, and anecdotes from any of you that have done med-evacs or search-and-rescues - anything to help update and advance our training. What do you like to see from the "rescuers"? What DON"T you like to see? Tell me your stories!

 

Cheers,

 

Darren

 

 

What I do like to see: Everybody being very very careful.

 

What I don't like to see: Heros.

 

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I did my little orientation yesterday. A couple days beforehand, I went over and visited the Elbow River folks, and listened to the RK Heli guides do their heli orientation with their skiers. Between chatting with the pilots and AMEs, the heli guides and the stuff I learned in school, I gathered enough information so that it went well.

 

What I do like to see: Everybody being very very careful.

 

What I don't like to see: Heros.

 

Great advice; I incorporated this into my talk. Thanks!

 

Helos hepling out with a SAR that end up pushing the Wx "because it's a SAR"

 

If someones missing, usually the Wx is dodgy in the first place. Nothing worse than another machine having to set down or go missing and adding to the problem.

 

I can see your point there. In our case, that call is left up tho the Elbow River pilots, and as they're all pretty seasoned heli-ski guys they have no problem saying no-go to bad weather. As ski patrollers, we're fairly in-tune with the weather as well, so on really poor weather days we kinda keep it in the back of our heads that we don't have the option of a heli-evac that day.

 

Thanks again, y'all! :D

 

...Darren

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Daz,

 

We did a preseason heliski survey here-took the local doctor along, who is also the doctor and emergency person for the guests, (he is a skier as well) All briefed by lead guide as well as myself (pilot)

We are using our L-4 heli for support- on low gear, doctor decided to flip ski's around to help load, nearly hit the spinning blades.

Just because they are emergency trained people- don't trust them. Often they don't pay attention to you during briefing as they are used to being in charge.

 

B.M.

 

 

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Kinda glad I did the orientation when I did - we had a real heli-evac off the ski hill today. I'm happy to say it went off without a hitch. Even the Elbow River pilot commented on how well it went after all was said and done.

 

Unfortunately, I was tied up elsewhere on the ski hill, and missed out on the heli fun... :)

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People injured is FUN is it, you sick perveted bastage :down:

 

 

Not literally fun; I take no joy in the misfortune of others. I guess sarcasm doesn't always translate well in print. Guess I should've put quotes around the word fun, or chose a different smiley icon, or better yet, not used that phrase at all. Don't know if I can backpedal much more... :mellow:Dear god, this isn't a parachute, it's just a backpack!

 

If there's any upside to it all, it was less than 40 minutes between ski patrol receiving the accident report, to the helicopter arriving at the local hospital. Nothing fun about it, but there is a small measure of comfort in knowing we gave this person the best care they could've hoped for - and the heli-evac training played a small part in that.

 

...Darren

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