Irish SAR discussion

Wintergirl wrote: »

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It is a free country isn't it, its ok to ask these questions, Im sure a lot of people think like me and we don't know who to put our questions too without sounding heartless.

You keep talking as of you represent some group or union. Who is this we you keep speaking off.

You want answers? Why not start with the government department that gave the contract to chc. Why don't you ask you questions to chc. Tried the ICG office? Hell rescue 115 to 118 teams are on Facebook. Go there and ask them. They reply within minutes it says.

Would you like a link?

Wintergirl wrote: »

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/fg-queries-500m-helicopter-agreement-1.571230

I don't have the exact figures but we are tied into an expensive contract.

...........

The only other option is to buy 5 helicopters and setup Aer Corp teams.

gctest50 wrote: »

The only other option is to buy 5 helicopters and setup Aer Corp teams.

The Aer Corp , is not the best placed to handle SAR . SAR is now a dedicated training schedule and the aircraft are specifically equipped for that role

ALL over the world hell SAR is essentially a non military endeavour , UK , France, US ( though the US CG is regarded as a branch of the Military )

The expert report in SAR services recommended taking it away from the Aer Corp and I believe that remains the correct decision

Wintergirl wrote: »

I think I will be banging my head off a lot of brick walls trying to get answers as to why two helicopters, note not too ambulances, too massive helicopters were sent to the Atlantic Ocean in the early morning to pick up someone with what appears to be the severed tip of a finger.I don't know though has the details of the injury been confirmed, will that come out in the final AAIU report.Hopefully there will be a recommendation that a triage system is used in future.

Of course access to surgery which is denied to many people because of lack of funding is relevant, the money is all coming out of the one source so if we are spending millions on the SAR service then money is cut somewhere else.

i think before you comment any further you should try and learn how a decision is made to lift somebody off a vessel . learn the process of who , when , why and based on what info the decision is made .It is not made lightly . Regarding the crews on the vessel , on irish vessels all crew have to do basic first aid , on vessels from other states im pretty sure its the same. As explained in an earlier post by someone , a doctor , based on the information he was given would have made the decision to evacuate .Because it is very hard to diagnose an injury over the radio they would err on the side of caution .
you should also learn what the atlantic actually is, as you point out it was two helicopters and not two ambulances . An ambulance would have been no good at all at all, as everything would have been soaking wet and the engine would have stopped after the first few feet of water

faoiarvok wrote: »

As Wintergirl appears to be discussing cost of a response, rather than the callout being a factor in the crash of R116, can I suggest that it is possibly OT for this thread?

Hope this is not seen as "back seat modding", and apologise if it is.

Cost of saving a life should not come into this , the Coastguard are there to help like every other Countries emergency services, I don't know how many times I have seen two Ambulances and two Fire Engines turn up at a car crash and not be required after assessment of the casualty.

Wintergirl wrote: »

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/fg-queries-500m-helicopter-agreement-1.571230

I don't have the exact figures but we are tied into an expensive contract.

I never took much notice really until this accident happened, never thought what SAR involved but now know they never say NO to anything so if you have a cut finger on a trawler you can have SAR on speed dial.

I never thought either of how much its costing, does anyone do a cost benefit analysis, I mean leaving the emotions out of it and just looking how much does the cost of each call out represent.I mean the chances of you needing a helicopter to get you to hospital means you are probably going to die anyway or have a very poor quality of life if you live.

It is a free country isn't it, its ok to ask these questions, Im sure a lot of people think like me and we don't know who to put our questions too without sounding heartless.

The issue is not so much that you sound heartless (although you do) but that you self-evidently have had no interest in how this service works and what is required of it until this accident happened. If it had never happened, you wouldn't be asking these questions.

Firstly, the Department of Transport has some useful information on the Coastguard in general - it is more than just the helicopters by the way -

The requirement for Department of Transport to maintain an effective Search and Rescue (SAR) organisation derives from;

The Irish Government's acceptance of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
The International Conventions of Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) 1974
The International Convention on Maritime search and Rescue (SAR) 1979
The Salvage and Wreck Act, Section 7 requires the national provision of Marine Emergency Management services to save shipwrecked persons, the vessel, the cargo and the apparel of the vessel.
By Government decision the Coast Guard is responsible for the aforementioned initiation and co-ordination of civil maritime Search and Rescue within the Irish Search and Rescue Region (IRSRR).

Source

Clearly, the cheapest thing to do would be to not provide a service at all but we do. The question you should consider is this: are you thinking that the contract is expensive because you saw the number which is 500 million euro over ten years and said "that's expensive" or because you have an indepth knowledge of the cost of

1. buying helicopters
2. paying helicopter pilots, winch operators and winchmen
3. maintaining helicopters
4. coordinating work planning for pilots, winch operators, winchmen and helicopter maintenance
5. administering a helicopter rescue service

It seems to me that you're assuming it's expensive and working backwards from that but not demonstrating that you have any indepth knowledge of the costs of running this kind of operation and more specifically, the skillsets required to do so.

At the end of the day, the helicopter crew concerned were not actually going out for a shout - they were providing top cover and the airlift would not have been contentious if top cover was not required, ie, the trawler was close enough to shore for top cover not to be necessary (but too far for a lifeboat).

There is a general tendency in rescue matters to be better safe than sorry and that is why the default should generally be to send out the chopper rather than trying to find some arbitrary line along the lines of "look this just too expensive let's not do it".

Triage does, afaik happen, but a) I'm not medically trained and b) I'm not triage trained. I don't think it's a fair argument to suggest that the helicopter should not have gone out because guess what, nor do I spend much time on deep sea trawlers but the risk factors for injuries out there are different to what they might be if you were already on land.

The problem I think with this post - and I say this with the greatest respect - is that you clearly have no idea about anything but seem to be starting from the point of view that it's probably too expensive despite not knowing how much it costs, how the contract operates, why we would do this - did you know that a lot of our (non-helicopter) Coast Guard crews and most if not all of our Lifeboat crews volunteer? They are not paid to do this and yet they do it. They do it because they consider that it is the right thing to do, and we as a nation provide a coast guard SAR service because we believe it is the right thing to do.

By implying that we over spend on this, you are implying that people whose actual job it is to evaluate these things don't know what they are doing despite the fact that perhaps, they have a lot more information to hand than you do such as ball park operating costs, a few different tender responses, experience for previous iterations of SAR services that we have.

If you started from the point of "I never really thought about it, but I'd like to understand how this works, and I'd like to know what is actually required from a SAR service in this day and age" rather than giving the strong impression that you have no informational context to assess whether the CHC contract is worth the money or not and indeed whether the provision of SAR services and a Coast Guard is worth doing or not but assume we are somehow wasting money here, I think you'd get a far more positive response.

As a general note to the Mods I am wondering if elements of this thread in particular with respect to current SAR operations in the context of perhaps being down a helicopter across the country plus a discussion of whether we should be in this business or not could be split off to a separate thread.

TomOnBoard wrote: »

@Calina

What an excellent post!

As for your point to mods re the need for a separate thread, I'm +1.

+1 and a great post.

+ 1 on this brilliant post Calina. It will be interesting to see how wintergirl responds if she responds at all.

wintergirl has been sitebanned by a site Admin as a re-reg of a previously banned poster.

Negative_G wrote: »

Would you have a link to said report?

Was there one? I thought the Aer Corps being taken out of SAR operations resulted from a range of actions that were taken during very murky political decision-making between the loss of R111 in Tramore in 1999 and 2003. There were lots of struggles going on at the time, and Michael Smith as Min for Defense shut down the last Aer Corps involvement in Sligo simply by ministerial decision. Am I wrong?

gctest50 wrote: »

The Air Corp more or less were blocked from buying half a dozen s92's afaik

I'll dig up links

But no report, such as was alluded to above, exists, yeah?

Negative_G wrote: »

Not to my knowledge.

You are correct regarding the demise of AC SAR. There was a lot of agitating going on behind the scenes by certain ranks which contributed significantly.

And of course, privatisation of as much of the public service as possible was stated policy of the PD/FF axis exemplified by Mary Harney and Charlie Mc Creevy, so that would have over-ridden whatever 'right' was on the side of the agitating you refer to. In retrospect, it's a pity there was no 'expert report', but that's the kind of thing that characterised Iteland while the Tiger was roaring. :mad:

ProfessorPlum wrote: »

I think Wintergirl brings up some good (and some not so good) points. They deserve proper discissusion and not to be waived away with 'SAR hero' hyperbole. If I was putting my life on the line as part of a SAR crew, I'd like to think there was some serious thought going into the reasons why I was being sent out.

It is however important to distance the two issues. This accident did not happen because R116 was tasked inappropriately. The mission, whether necessary or unnecessary, was well within our SAR capabilities.

The other issue is the structure and reasoning behind the decision to task. Just like crews will make a 'risk-benefit' go/no go decision based on operational reasons such as bad weather, it is also right that somewhere someone is making a risk-benefit or, perish the thought, cost benefit decision based on the risk to the responders, the cost of the response, and the condition of the casualty. Clearly it is not appropriate to task a helicopter to evacuate a casualty who is suffering from some minor ailment. So the decision has to be made somewhere - whether to task, whether not to task, or if tasking can be delayed to decrease risk to the mission (improved weather window/daylight/availability of fixed wing cover). As I understand it, calls are triaged through CUH, but I was some what surprised at the sequence of events in the preliminary report. (2. History of the Mission - unable to copy and paste). It seems to suggest that the decision to evacuate was made by MRSC Malin, before discussing with with medic at Cork University Hospital. In fact, the doctor asks MRSC Malin 'is he going to be medevaced'. Perhaps the IRCG needs to review their procedures regarding tasking.
On the issue of cost, yes, we pay a private contractor to provide a service for essentially a fixed fee. So less taskings won't end up meaning more scoliosis surgery. However, unnecessary taskings may allow the private contractor to spend money elsewhere within the operation and still make the all important profit. On more training perhaps. Or more equipment like NVG. Or on updating their woefully out of date route guide.

A number of excellent observations, professor.

Here's the relevant excerpt from the preliminary report:

"At approximately 21.39 hrs on 13 March 2017, the captain of a fishing vessel (FV) contacted Malin Head Marine Rescue Sub Centre (MRSC) to notify them of a medical emergency on board due to an injury to a crewman. The position of the FV at the time of the call was N 54o 17.450’, W 014o 06.944’, which was 141 nm and bearing 270 degrees from Eagle Island, Co. Mayo.
The nearest Irish Coast Guard SAR helicopter to the FV was located at Sligo Airport; its crew were on a 45-minute response time to launch. At approximately 21.42 hrs the MRSC Malin contacted the Sligo SAR Crew Duty Pilot. MRSC Malin provided the Duty Pilot with the details of the mission tasking, including the weather conditions and the nature of the medical emergency. The Sligo Duty Pilot accepted the tasking.

At 21.54 hrs, MRSC Malin contacted the Marine Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC) Dublin with a request “Dublin helo for top cover”10. MRCC responded that they would advise if an Air Corps CASA was available.

At 21.55 hrs, MRSC Malin established a 3-way call/phone-patch with the captain of the FV and a Doctor from the contracted medical service at Cork. After discussing the extent of the injuries, the Doctor asked MRSC Malin “is he [the injured seaman] going to be medevaced11?” MRSC Malin advised that he was."

Negative_G wrote: »

Would you have a link to said report?

Im not sure it was made public

TomOnBoard wrote: »

Who were the experts who authored it?

I cant really divulge anymore , till I establish if it was ever made public

it should be remembered that at the time , the Aer Corps essentially had limited night flying ability etc

BoatMad wrote: »

it would be incorrect to say that there is any sort of what would be regarded as medical triage. When a call comes to an MMRC and medical help is required , then that call is relayed to a panel of response experts . Those experts may " influence " the decision to launch , but they have no authority to control that decision

Well that's interesting and perhaps something that should be looked at. Although this is according to the Dept:
The Coast Guard also provides Ireland's 24/7 Radio Medical Advice Service whereby vessels making calls on either VHF or MF radio, or telephone call requiring medical advice or assistance are provided with a radio/telephone link to Medico Cork in Cork University Hospital or to foreign Medico Centres. If medical advice requires the casualty to be taken off the vessel then the MRCC/MRSC providing the link will arrange for the casualty to be transported from the vessel to a hospital. IRCG Responders or aircrew dealing with patients in remote locations can be linked live through a Coordination centre on marine communications to Medico Cork or any foreign Medico Centre.

Discodog wrote: »

The idea that the injury wasn't serious enough is ridiculous. What's next ? Mayday Mayday we are sinking
How fast ? Can you get closer before calling us ?
Are you sure that you are sinking ?

The idea that every injury, no mater how not serious, should be met with a helicopter evacuation is ridiculous. Triage is not a dirty word. Assessing the appropriateness of a potentially risky tasking is not ridiculous.

BoatMad wrote: »

aircraft have not approved sat phones for use , as I understand it

Sat phone is how I contact our approved medical advice centre in case of a medical situation on board. They can advise whether we need to divert or not. It's a very useful system. SATCOMs and triage.