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Arapiles accident Saturday 09/02/2008 12-Feb-2008 At 3:30:37 PM Fizz

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Firstly, If the helicopter is availiable in Bendigo at the time of an incident at Mt Arapiles, there is a fair chance it will be put in the air and sent towards the Mount (This is due to mechanism of injury...blah,blah,blah). It's better to have one in the area and not needed than a ground crew turn up and decide they do. As for getting yourself, in a private vehicle, to hospital. If you can 100% guarantee that yourself and or the injured party does not have a unstable spinal fracture, then go right ahead. I however have never seen anybody at the mount with an x-ray machine, let alone carried to the base of the crag!

On 12/02/2008 Eduardo Slabofvic wrote:
>Before we start petitioning people to get a chopper based in the Wimmera,
>shouldn’t we first decide on
>what the health care and community safety priorities are for the community
>then spend money on the
>highest priorities first.

Who do you think should decide on these priorities. The local Medical Practioners who stand to make the most from allocation of funds, or members of the communities who demand the highest possible care for their family and friends? Although the Wimmera Base Hospital(WBH) is one of the best Regional Trauma Centres in Victoria, it is not even close to the standard of the Major Trauma Centres of the Alfred or the Royal Melbourne. No amount of funds thrown at the WBH will change this, for several reasons that I will not go into now.

On 12/02/2008 kieranl wrote:
>Eduardo is quite right. Estimated cost of maintaining a rescue chopper
>in Western Vic is about $10 million per year. Given that:
>1. Any western Vic chopper is likely to be located near Warrnambool rather
>than Horsham and
Hamilton would be the place of choice, but due to number of days of poor flying conditions per year due to low cloud this would not be practical. Warrnambool is not the sensible option due to losing 180 degrees of coverage area due to the ocean (there are very few incidents that require Search & Rescue each year in that part of the Southern Ocean).
>2. I am not aware of any major incident at Arapiles over the last few
>years where a helicopter was not available if needed.
Maybe so, but I can think of one very recent incident where HEMS3 (Bendigo) was not availiable nor 495 (Melb. based) and 496 (Melb. Police helicopter) had to be taken back to Essendon and refitted for Air Amb. duties which resulted in a lengthy delay in the extrication of the Patient. The other thing to remember is that a helicopter would not be there only to service accidents at arapiles. In the past 10 days a helicopter has been used twice to ferry critically injured patient to Melb. from SW of the Mount.
>You would have to think that the money could be better spent.
>A helicopter is just a transport option.
Not sure if the Paramedics onboard the Helicopters would agree with you there. They are the most highly trained in the state and can treat a patient to a higher level than most (most, not all) of the Medical Officers in Emergency at WBH on any given day. Especially this time of year when they are all fresh out of Uni.
>We could spend $10 million a
>year but there's no guarantee that it will be available when it's really
>needed. If there's a rescue at sea off Warrnambool and a climber with head
>injuries at Arapiles were's the chopper going to be?
This would be the case if the helicopter was based at the base of Mt Arapiles. There is no guarantee that a road ambulance is available at any given time either.
>Maybe you could spend a couple of hundred thou training the paramedics
>in the region so that they are qualified to be lowered to a patient on
>a cliff-face?
I agree with you here, but it does open a huge can of worms. This is a subject I have looked into extensively over the past 18 mnths and some progress has been made, unfortunately bugger all. The idea of training members of ARG to a higher level of First aid is also on the drawing board but as with any government body, change is hard and slow. There is a general shortage of Paramedics in the Wimmera, which should be addressed first.