Please explain the rationale- With loss of helicopters to budget cuts

[Bograt]

I do not mean to be disrespectful for bringing up this issue. I read this article in the national post this morning.

http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=07129522-f985-4e91-a0be-d363168e0404

'Shocking' snowbird rescue wait
With loss of helicopters to budget cuts, race to fallen airmen took 47 minutes

<i>An air force rescue team took almost an hour to get to the site of a crash that killed one member of the Canadian Forces Snowbirds and injured another -- because the team's search-and-rescue helicopters fell victim to budget cuts in the 1990s.</i>

I thought that SAR helos were available at all bases (My experience has been Greenwood, Comox, Gander, Goose, Trenton). I would have assumed that for a training base, SAR helos would be available.

I am tired of being angry. How is this rationalized? Could someone explain to me the thought process that came up with this budget reduction?

 

[pbi]

I don't think there are any SAR helos stationed at Moose Jaw, nor have there been any in recent memory. Since the countyside around Moose Jaw is generally easily accessible by road, there are civiilan emergency services available (even in rural areas) and there are few if any large bodies of water nearby, there isn't much need to station a helo there as opposed to say, Cold Lake or Comox. In an area like Moose Jaw the local volunteer fire department would probably be responding with their extrication gear long before a SAR team could get there.

Can one of our Air Force friends shed any light? Cheers.

 

[Big Foot]

I know Moose Jaw is home to the Snowbirds, but is there any other large air force thing there that would warrant having helos? I realise this might be bad logic, but to me, it doesn't make all that much sense to have 1 helo for only 11 planes. Please, correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[pbi]

I believe there is also a DND-contracted firm operating there to provide jet training for Cdn and foreign pilots. Other than that it seems to be a pretty small and quiet operation. Cheers.

 

[Garry]

Moose Jaw has been a training base for CF pilots for as long as I can remember. In it's heyday, "the Jaw" had app 100 "Tutor" aircraft (what the snowbirds fly) as jet trainers. It also had a "Base Rescue" flight of helicopters.

Moose Jaw is now home to the "Nato Flying Training in Canada" (NFTC) a Bombardier organisation that trains both CF and NATO pilots. Bombardier does this with a combination of CF pers and infrastructure, as well as Civ pers and infrastructure. They have both Harvard II basic training aircraft, and well as Hawk jet trainers there. Not sure how many of each. The snowbirds are also based in Moose jaw.

Beyond me how they operate safely with no dedicated airbornes SAR.

Shame.

 

[Inch]

A few points, I'll start at the top.

Bograt, there isn't really a SAR backup at each base, it just seems that way. The TacHel Sqns and MH Sqns take care of their own SAR, no SAR techs are to be found in any of those locations. There are no helos at all in Winnipeg which is home to the Nav school, 402 Sqn and 435 Sqn. The Basic Helicopter School in Portage takes care of SAR at 3 CFFTS. So, cheezies (SAR Techs on account of the orange coveralls  ) are not as common as you would think.

pbi, the area south of Moose Jaw, exactly where the training area is, is not as forgiving as you would believe. It's actually quite rugged. They do their show practices at an abandoned BCATP airfield called Mossbank, approx 50nm south of the MJ airfield as the crow flys. It's about an hour or more to the training area from the base on the ground. There's a town near there, but it's quite small and would definitely lack the medical facilities required for an aviation accident. There's also a rather large lake just north of their training area and about 20nm south of the base, I've been told it's not all that deep, but perfectly healthy people drown in bathtubs and I dare say that after ejecting, swimming would not be high on my list of things to do.

Garry is correct. NFTC is run out of Moose Jaw with 24 Harvard IIs and 7 Hawks doing about 100 sorties a day. The Snowbirds are actually just a drop in the bucket compared to the operations at the Big 2 (2 Canadian Forces Flying Training School or 2CFFTS). It's quite the busy airfield, I know my head was on a swivel looking for other aircraft when I was flying there. While I was on course there, there was a civvie helo that I think was contracted out by Bombardier to do base rescue, where and when that dissappeared I'll never know.

I definitely think that there should be a CS Sqn there, similar to Goose, Bagtown and Frosty Pond. It's probably one of the busier airfields in the CF and given the nature of the operations there, I would say lacking base SAR is a major concern.

 

[pbi]

I stand corrected. Cheers.

 

[pbi]

However, wrong as I was, I see that I was right in one point: civil emergency response vs SAR. I took this from the cbc.ca news website this AM (14 Dec):

[quote"...The military says Capt. Miles Selby, 31, who died in the crash, could not have been saved. And the surviving pilot, Capt. Chuck Mallett, was picked up by a local civilian ambulance within 18 minutes, faster than rescue helicopters can usually reach an accident site..."
]
My assumption (even though I'm an Army guy...) was that the base would have to have been informed of the crash (probably by locals who saw or heard it), assemble and brief the SAR crew, get the helo spun up, then fly out and locate the site, then find a safe landing site.Local fire/ rescue folks were probably starting from closer locations, knew the area better, and don't require much of a preparatory procedure to launch: they check their pagers, jump in their personal vehicles and go, while the people  nearest the station roll out the apparatus.

I'm not slanging SAR (who would?) but I am have some limited familiarity with that area of SK so I know it is not an uninhabited wasteland.

My real point is that it may not be fair nor appropriate to crucify the Air Force for not having a permanent SAR chopper on Moose Jaw. If there's one thing that I understand about our Air Force, it's the importance they place on flight safety. Cheers.

 

[Bograt]

pbi,

I do not understand the rationale. Why do we have SAR in Goose, Bogotville, Cold Lake and not in the Jaw. Is it because it is run by a civilian contractor? Is the contractor responsible for SAR? Is Bombardier the contractor?

I don't understand that at a training base there is no SAR. Graham said yesterday that the reduction was not due to budget cuts. Okay, so what was the reason to cut a capability at a flying base? Now the government spin doctors are trying to deflect the cuts and question the role of the aerobatics team.

 

[Cloud Cover]

One would think that because it is a training base for new pilots, there would be an increased need for SAR choppers.

 

[Inch]

pbi,

The team would have radioed MJ tower almost immediately after the accident, it's a good bet that they knew long before anyone else knew. They would have also radioed their position, a bearing and distance from Moose Jaw. I remember while I was there, they did a simulated crash. The biggest problem was trying to relay the position to the ground teams since they didn't have the equipment nor altitude to get the info that we would relay to them from the air. VHF radios are line of sight, unfortunately, that's not too effective on the ground. We could relay position info from a GPS fix, but the Tutors aren't equipped with GPS, come to think of it, I don't believe the Hawks are either, though I could be mistaken.

As for landing areas, as long as there's no obstructions higher than 3 ft within 1/2 rotor diameter of the helo and the ground is relatively level, a helo can land just about anywhere. The Sea King for example only needs a hole in the trees about 140ft in diameter and the Sea King is about 72 ft long with rotors turning.

In any case, even if it took the helo 5 minutes longer to get there, they'd be able to transport the casualty to the hospital far faster than an ambulance.

 

[George Wallace]

Bogart

In response to your question....SAR Techs and Helios are at these Bases, as well as Trenton and Greenwood, more for any Civil Emergency, rather than solely dedicated to Military Evacs.   If you check out the statistics, SAR responses by these organizations are probably 99% of the time Civilian in nature (all out of the DND budget).

I might add that I am quite impressed and proud of the outstanding job these guys are performing.  They are the best.

GW