At the end of the month, Phoenix Heli-Flight’s 24 hour medical evacuation helicopter is ending its service.
President Paul Spring says it didn’t get promised funding from government and industry.
“We looked at the prospects and said “you know, we’re not gaining any traction.” We’re still doing lots of medi-vac calls, but Phoenix Heli-Flight could no longer subsidize that kind of work,” he adds, “it was going to affect our core business, which is when we realized that we just got to give up. It’s a well needed service, but we can’t fund it alone”
He does commend Suncor and Cenovus who’ve each pitched 10% of the just under $3-million a year budget.
But Spring says government and most oil companies are just pointing fingers.
“If you look at the strict legal requirements, they have medics on-site, they do meet the law, as far as what they have to do for patient care,” he continues, “and the government will say ‘welll, it’s not really our responsibility if their working at site,’ but if it’s somebody on the highway, nobody wants to take responsibility for it. It’s just, well, it’s a stalemate.”
Spring says the province’s fee-for-service payment is unpredictable and not guaranteed.
He says it won’t end medi-vac service entirely, just service with this special helicopter, that could also fly at night.
“When we can help we will. We won’t hold an aircraft specifically for that role. If one is available we’ll use it we still have seven machines with stretchers in them, But it’s if we’re available, and only if it’s daytime.”
Spring also says, this one helicopter is the only helicopter in Fort McMurray that will be allowed to use the heli-pad going in the local hospital.
“So the province is telling me, ‘we won’t fund your helicopter, your 24/7 dedicated helicopter, but we’re going to build a pad for it, and when it leaves the pad will be used by nobody.'”
He recognizes the province isn’t trying to build the new pad this way, it has to.
“It’s just the way the city’s been built up around the hospital. When Transport Canada looks at aviation facilities, they look at safety for people on the ground,” he explains, “the people in the helicopter know the risk they’re taking, they’ve got on board and they know what they’re doing. The people on the ground have to be protected against unknown risk, they haven’t agreed that a helicopter may fall out of the sky and hit them.”
Spring says the new pad has to have the highest safety standard possible.
“That means the heli-pad will have to be built likely on the roof of the hospital, or elevated and for safety reasons it’ll have to be a multi-engine helicopter, that has a performance category called PC1, performance category 1.”
He says a heli-pad has to match that performance and the standard is called H1.
“When they build a H1 heli-pad, we don’t own any other aircraft that are PC1, our other machines are PC2 and PC3, he continues, “so by law, we will not be allowed to use that pad.”
