Chopper story two.

Not so positive, but still important.

Up this way the fall out from the botched medi-vac of a badly burnt man outside Sheshatshiu last week has yet to happen, as far as we know.

Talk about one big balls up. Seems that just recently the ambulance and air ambulance co ordination for the whole province has been shifted to ‘Eastern health’ way down there on the Avalon Peninsular. That would be fine if they knew anything about the province they purport to co ordinate.

RCMP in attendance at the scene of the incident put in calls to Labrador Health to get this badly burnt man out ASAP. Following ‘set protocols’ the call goes to Labrador Health thence to Eastern health. Someone there does not know shit and says it will take at least four hours for a chopper from Gander to get to scene.
All this time there is a well known service in Goose Bay called the 444 Rescue Squadron that does this sort of operation all the time, but no one calls them.

The long short, the RCMP call in a boat and get the man to hospital over wind swept waters and a rough North West River Road, he is then airlifted to St.John’s in critical condition.

Now we have people calling in to CBC with comments like, the RCMP officer [interviewed] sounded like he was disinterested and very wooden. I can say yes he did, but rightly or wrongly that’s the way they are trained, and the protocol for those things.

The head of the Labrador Health Board was on this morning trying to explain the debacle and what will be ‘discussed’ to make sure it does not happen again. He sure sounded wooden and overly bureaucratic, until he got defensive when interviewer asked if the ‘local’ people had to answer for any short comings.

It was stated by CBC that the head of the Emergency Response for the province commented that she was “not aware of the existence of the 444 air service in Goose Bay. Bloody hell, how stunned can you get.

I say lets get passed all the rhetoric and saving ones arse bullshit, lets have some heads roll, and quick, if they don’t then lets have some head honcho heads roll.