Whistler SAR Can’t land a single engine helicopter at the medical clinic in Whistler. Instead they have to fly to the heliport, transfer to an ambulance, and drive the patient to the clinic.
This editorial in the local Whistler newspaper, the Pique, provides more detail on the issue. In cases where the subject of a search is gravely injured, the delay from transferring the patient at the airport before driving to the hospital can be life threatening.
Hmm…that is a problem.
They aren’t the only ones. Many hospitals in BC have the same restriction
Since BCAS is responsible for pre-hospital care and transportation and since SAR provides assistance to BCAS by accessing the patient and delivering the patient to the care of BCAS it makes sense to me that the patient would be delivered to the ambulance crew not the clinic. Helicopter landings at hospitals is frowned upon if not prohibited in most cases.
I’d think that in the cases where a patient is very badly injured it would make more sense to go directly to the hospital.
Good luck, my team provides assistance to BCAS and as such turns their patient over to them for transport to the hospital which does take more time than flying direct to the hospital. As in Whistler landing at the hospital is not an option, asking BCAS to send an acute care team to meet the SAR helicopter is an option we utilize.
Each of us only has so much energy, pick your battles wisely. Good luck!
We have a perfectly safe helipad at the local clinic we want to use for high urgency patients. We have used this helipad for years with singles and have had no problems. Our issue is we are forced to use a twin to go straight to the clinic. These aircraft are not always available, have long warm up/cool down times, are very marginal for power at the altitudes we work at, and if you look at the stats, are no safer than singles. We don’t see why the SAR volunteers should be at greater risk in the field, in order to satisfy a regulatory reuirement that offers no safety benefit. I should point out that the Twinstars we have access to are not Category A rated, so an engine failure on takeoff or short final we result in the aircraft going straight to the ground the same as a single would.
This was a problem that was created by coastal Health. They decided to change the category of the Helipad at the Whistler clinic, which meant that Transport Canada had to abide by the rules and enforce the Twin Engine CAT A helicopters. This meant that BCAS could not land there in the Sikorsky S76 because it is not CAT A until the Whistler municipality had created a method to stop traffic on the nearby roads and take off and departure path, using up some of their precious car parking. They finally completed this after almost a year, but it is still restricted to Twin engine. This was BC Coastal healths decision. We have been told that single engine landings at the pad will not be tolerated.
By the way, Whistler Blackcomb gets its medevacs performed by BCAS.