True or False?

[Tom H]

The article linked is about the new medivac faciltiy at YEG.

To those that have used it are the comments true, false or somewhere in between?

Sorry but when I hear one government bureaucrat ranting about how good the work of another bureaucrat's department is I get suspicious.

Particularly on a "hot" topic

http://nnsl.com/northern-news-services/ ... 13med.html

[Needtofly]

This new facility has many bugs that need to be worked out. Number one there ramp outside is way to small for more then two king airs. This hot load that they talk about is BS we have had a critical patent and called in for a hot transfer and when we got to the ramp no one know what was going on. I feel this new facility and coordination need a lot of work yet. But this is just my opinion.
Pm me for more details.

[Captain X]

+1

The time to get the patient to the hospital now is at least 30min longer than it was before.

[Tom H]

Thanks Gentlemen

Real world answers beat the media everyday

Need to fly will PM you on Monday

Tom

[Doc]

And Tom.just so you know, it's "medevac", not "medivac"....but really not a biggie...

[Tom H]

And Tom.just so you know, it's "medevac", not "medivac"....but really not a biggie...

Thanks Doc

Yes with all the different versions a guy gets bombarded with I try to just use "Air Ambulance"...but sometimes I blow it.

Tom

[Doc]

And Tom.just so you know, it's "medevac", not "medivac"....but really not a biggie...

Thanks Doc

Yes with all the different versions a guy gets bombarded with I try to just use "Air Ambulance"...but sometimes I blow it.

Tom

Or "Flying Doctor" works in some parts of the globe. Cheers mate.

Actually, the whole use of the term "medevac" conjures up images of brave young men and women fearlessly shoehorning large choppers into HOT LZ's. Nothing could be farther from the truth. For the most part, we provide medical transfers. Probably less than 30% of the "medevac" call signs we hear on the airway are "actual" medevac status, or priority "medevac" flights. I know of one "colourful" Ontario based operator who uses "medevac" status on EVERY flight to avoid NavCanada fees. Seriously.
Perhaps we should change the term to "MedTrans"?
Back to my rum and coke.

[Beefitarian]

"Flying Doctor" used to be a Doctor in Australia that went out to visit aboriginal people in the out back. Many of the places had no roads in or out.

[Doc]

"Flying Doctor" used to be a Doctor in Australia that went out to visit aboriginal people in the out back. Many of the places had no roads in or out.

Everybody knows that though Beef.....Don't need no stinking "roads" in the outback, mate! Just hold a heading!

[Beefitarian]

I like Australia. Not Sydney though. They hate tourists and brother, I am a tourist! Plus they think I'm merican too.

[Beefitarian]

So excuse my on original topic post here but...

Isn't there any reporters that want to hang around the pilots and talk about the inefficiency of the new ramp?

[Tom H]

So excuse my on original topic post here but...

Isn't there any reporters that want to hang around the pilots and talk about the inefficiency of the new ramp?

From my experience (2) problems:

1) The folks I know face to face don't want to go on record (for various reasons) and the media won't play without someone of expertise going on record.

2) Because of all the vitriol and politics surrounding the topic they are gun shy without granite solid information and sources.

FWIW that's my experience

Tom

[Beefitarian]

That sucks. The people with an agenda are never shy about going on record to lie. "This will have no noticeable effect on wait times." sort of thing.

[Tom H]

Doc

Probably less than 30% of the "medevac" call signs we hear on the airway are "actual" medevac status, or priority "medevac" flights.

My personal opinion...
From what I can pry from the media and government reports and papers of all types it appears at least here in Alberta approx 40% are Critical, Urgent or Critical Care...several thousand per year after wading through all the mish mash.

Tom

[teh1pilot]

Alright everyone...I'm going to set the record straight

I work with this area everyday in the office....and am a Medevac dispatcher with AHS. So getting the answers from someone who works in the field on a very regular basis would set all the rumars straight. Yes, the City Centre has been closed to all NWT medevac trips, and have already been landing at CYEG.

CYXD was closed off to all Medevac's utilizing an Alberta Fixed wing/STARS Helicopter in March. They have now been using something called the Alberta Health Services Air Operations Centre. It is essentially a much larger hangar, including ambulance bays for 4 dedicated ground ambulances. During the day, there should be 4 operational ground units. During the night......only 2. Also in the hangar are, of course the fixed wings/helicopter, and 6 beds. These are the "Patient Transition Rooms", and are staffed with nurses and doctors to provide patient care. These beds are available 7 days a week, from 0800-2000. Any patient that does not require urgent or critical care may be transported from a hospital, or even the fixed wing they came in on. These patients will be essentially waiting in a PTR to transition to a hospital or on to a fixed wing to transport them to their respective destinations should the resources(either ground or air) not be available at the time to do the job. Really, its a hotel room for a few hours for patients to go until a ride can come and pick em up and bring them home.

Now, given all that basic background information, the NWT will also be coming in/out of CYEG, and using the AHS AOC resources. They simply phone us up, tell us of a plane coming in from say....Yellowknife, provide us with patient details and an ETA. It is then our job to make sure an ambulance is available and ready for the arrival of the plane on the ramp. The ambulance scoops up the patient, and drives them out to the city for further care.

Now I will say that the involvement of STARS WRT involvement with a critical patient. In the media, they say that STARS will be able to air lift a critical patient from CYEG to a hospital and essentially cut down travel time. What the media neglected to include, is simply the fact that STARS can do that....only if weather, work flow, maintenance, and availability allow. For example, obviously if the STARS helicopter is out on a scene call and a patient comes in by fixed wing that is critical, STARS won't be able to transport said critical patient to the hospital by air, and will have to be grounded. The ground trip is typically about 30 mins, but can be extended/shortened due to weather and traffic conciderations. That 100 car pile-up during the snow storm this year on the QE II...ya a much longer transport time.

While the system seems to be working quite well, I personally feel CYXD still worked much better. There was much less traffic congestion, the Royal Alex was right across the street, the airport DID! have a wide range of Instrument approaches, and generally did the same job as the center at CYEG. The city spent millions of dollars setting up the YEG center, and CYXD was shut down for what reason? To make money. Doesn't that sound a little counter-intuitive? Now the city has to pay for things like cleaning the contaminated soil from fuel/oil. They have approach equipment all just sitting around the airport, they will have to pay to have that removed, and on top of that, the reason they shut down the airport in the first place is to build housing. What virtually unknown to the public is these are going to be low-income houses and parks. Essentially the city will be so far in debt with this whole project, it would have been better to keep the airport. I say Mandel has his hand in the cookie jar with the entire contract.....

[Edo]

......... and the media won't play without someone of expertise going on record.

All you have to do is say you have a video of Rob Ford; then media ethics go flying out the window faster than STARS can "hot transfer" their collective corporate ego.

[teh1pilot]

......... and the media won't play without someone of expertise going on record.

All you have to do is say you have a video of Rob Ford; then media ethics go flying out the window faster than STARS can "hot transfer" their collective corporate ego.

lmfao. You got a video? I think one offer for the video was something crazy like 200,000 for a video or Rob Ford smokin on the glass knob

[Tom H]

Alright everyone...I'm going to set the record straight

I work with this area everyday in the office....and am a Medevac dispatcher with AHS. So getting the answers from someone who works in the field on a very regular basis would set all the rumars straight. Yes, the City Centre has been closed to all NWT medevac trips, and have already been landing at CYEG.

CYXD was closed off to all Medevac's utilizing an Alberta Fixed wing/STARS Helicopter in March. They have now been using something called the Alberta Health Services Air Operations Centre. It is essentially a much larger hangar, including ambulance bays for 4 dedicated ground ambulances. During the day, there should be 4 operational ground units. During the night......only 2. Also in the hangar are, of course the fixed wings/helicopter, and 6 beds. These are the "Patient Transition Rooms", and are staffed with nurses and doctors to provide patient care. These beds are available 7 days a week, from 0800-2000. Any patient that does not require urgent or critical care may be transported from a hospital, or even the fixed wing they came in on. These patients will be essentially waiting in a PTR to transition to a hospital or on to a fixed wing to transport them to their respective destinations should the resources(either ground or air) not be available at the time to do the job. Really, its a hotel room for a few hours for patients to go until a ride can come and pick em up and bring them home.

Now, given all that basic background information, the NWT will also be coming in/out of CYEG, and using the AHS AOC resources. They simply phone us up, tell us of a plane coming in from say....Yellowknife, provide us with patient details and an ETA. It is then our job to make sure an ambulance is available and ready for the arrival of the plane on the ramp. The ambulance scoops up the patient, and drives them out to the city for further care.

Now I will say that the involvement of STARS WRT involvement with a critical patient. In the media, they say that STARS will be able to air lift a critical patient from CYEG to a hospital and essentially cut down travel time. What the media neglected to include, is simply the fact that STARS can do that....only if weather, work flow, maintenance, and availability allow. For example, obviously if the STARS helicopter is out on a scene call and a patient comes in by fixed wing that is critical, STARS won't be able to transport said critical patient to the hospital by air, and will have to be grounded. The ground trip is typically about 30 mins, but can be extended/shortened due to weather and traffic conciderations. That 100 car pile-up during the snow storm this year on the QE II...ya a much longer transport time.

While the system seems to be working quite well, I personally feel CYXD still worked much better. There was much less traffic congestion, the Royal Alex was right across the street, the airport DID! have a wide range of Instrument approaches, and generally did the same job as the center at CYEG. The city spent millions of dollars setting up the YEG center, and CYXD was shut down for what reason? To make money. Doesn't that sound a little counter-intuitive? Now the city has to pay for things like cleaning the contaminated soil from fuel/oil. They have approach equipment all just sitting around the airport, they will have to pay to have that removed, and on top of that, the reason they shut down the airport in the first place is to build housing. What virtually unknown to the public is these are going to be low-income houses and parks. Essentially the city will be so far in debt with this whole project, it would have been better to keep the airport. I say Mandel has his hand in the cookie jar with the entire contract.....

Thanks for the real information teh1pilot ...

Tom H

[teh1pilot]

Not a problem. I personally want the CORRECT! information to get passed along from a first hand account, instead of the bureaucrats sitting at city hall, and media personnel who are essentially playing a big game of telephone. As a local pilot/instructor and an Edmonton resident, I think the CYXD shut down was complete and total bullsh**. While I was working at the Esso Avitat at the airport, the 34/16 shutdown litterally happened over night. I seen lights and trucks ripping apart the runway, virtually unannounced, and come morning the runway was unserviceable. It just so happened to be the most critical runway of the airport. Instead, why couldn't they have ripped apart 30/12, and left 34/16(with the ILS approach) for the important flights? Because they wanted to cripple the airport, and make the public start to think the airport can't handle the medevac flights any longer.

Now let me give a few of the people who aren't aware of Edmonton situation a little background info on the person who made these decisions. Mayer Mandel started his reign of terror by shutting down the airport. Then he proceeded with a new arena project, that was to only advance should the provincial government agree to pitch in some $$$$$ The Alberta Government maintained that they will not be doing so. Guess what? The plans continued on, despite the government saying they wouldn't pitch in. All of these plans, and yet the potholes around the city are enough to be considered small sink holes. The guy is a complete, and utter dipsh**. The only reason why the plans for the airport went forward, is because he fed off of the general public's blind eye towards the importance of the airport. No one knew exactly how much time the airport could shave off of transport time. For example, you had a stroke and require that magical drug within 6 hours to keep you from turning into Stephen Hawking. Lets say you are in Peace River, had the stroke, and after about 45 mins of "weird" symptoms your family tells you they think it's important to go to the hospital. You get there in half an hour. The Doc evaluates you, and after about an hour or so the doc thinks you should head out to the U of A, because they're one of those places that can administer the drug. 3 hours from FW dispatch to arrival at the hospital. You are on the verge of having about an hour(at best) to 30 mins to getting the drug that could virtually save your life. If traffic was congested, your family better know how to grease up your wheels on your wheelchair. People didn't realize the fact, and are now just starting to after the closure and millions of dollars are already invested.

I could rant and rant about the closure of the airport, but hey, ill leave the discussion up for anyone else

[Beefitarian]

~sigh~

I'm still depressed about the destruction of the "Bow Valley General hospital" in Calgary so they could sell land donated "to be used for a hospital only." to condo developers. Namao, air base and the former SAR squadron there...

I like saving money but would rather see our country improved. I don't even love Edmonton you'd think people living there would want the same improvements as me. I guess most people hate noisy airplanes unless they are taking them on vacation.

[teh1pilot]

I like saving money but would rather see our country improved. I don't even love Edmonton you'd think people living there would want the same improvements as me. I guess most people hate noisy airplanes unless they are taking them on vacation.

+1. In fact, there is noise abatement procedures in effect for approach into the airport, and i quote from the CFS..."Arr Rwy 12 or 30 Acft not to descend below 3200 ASL until commencing final apch for ldg". For those that don't know the airspace, thats circuit altitude.....While I wouldn't typically have much of a problem doing such a thing, I think it's personally retarded to lose 1000' on final approach, just so the shoppers in the mall parking lot(right underneath the glide path for 30) won't spill their orange julius, or feel 2 seconds of irritation because a plane woke them up from their sleep.

It isn't rocket science, people are more than willing to complain about the most useless stuff now than in the past. It's all because everyone(in general now) thinks that just because 1 thing pisses them off, that everyone else would automatically agree. Mayer Mandel thinks that a Medevac service in the heart of the city is a sore thumb on its appearance? It costs too much money to maintain? Sure, why not get ride of it. And while he's saving all that money, lets spend millions of dollars to build a new arena that we don't even need....Essential for non-essential. Makes sense.....

[Tom H]

Thanks again teh 1pilot

But a something on re reading:

The city spent millions of dollars setting up the YEG center

Actually the Province of Alberta has had to absorb all of the costs of the Air Ambulance Centre, related equipment, contract changes and ongoing expenses. Not the City of Edmonton.

The Province of Alberta is also paying for the extension of runway 08/26 at CZVL (Villeneuve) and the ILS installation...but the airport is owned by Edmonton Airports (EIA).

Together about 13-20million dollars plus ongoing operating expenses all from Provincial tax dollars.
All Albertans get to pay for a City of Edmonton decision it appears.

In my highly biased personal opinion
Tom H

[azimuthaviation]

I have to blame the voters of Edmonton, they should have known better, not as if there was no precedent for this. Mandel announced last week that he would not run for re-election and would return to the private sector. As a property developer. The City Centre Airport and the national heritage within along with the 760 000 residents in Edmonton were secondary concerns to Mandel and his friends business plans. Including of course billionaire Daryl Katz, who is blackmailing the residents of Edmonton that he will move the Oilers to Seattle unless they fork over upwards 500 million dollars to subsidize his arena.

Well the residents of the city paid a huge price for the Mandel era, and now that its over Mandel, Katz, and their business partners are laughing all the way to the synagogue. Sometimes I think how stupid the voters in Edmonton are and think "good for you, thats what you voted for, thats what you deserve", but then I remember CYXD, who served us so well in times of peace and war, where I and so many others found their beginnings in this industry, and built lives around it. Listening to the rhetoric, and hearing it be slandered by someone who only wanted it gone because they wanted to use the land it sits on (why does that sound so familiar?) was infuriating. We owe our heritage more than to let things like what happened to CYXD to happen again.

[azimuthaviation]

The Province of Alberta is also paying for the extension of runway 08/26 at CZVL (Villeneuve) and the ILS installation...but the airport is owned by Edmonton Airports (EIA).

What interest does the province have in ZVL? Are they planning on landing medevacs there? What department is paying for that?

[Tom H]

The Province of Alberta is also paying for the extension of runway 08/26 at CZVL (Villeneuve) and the ILS installation...but the airport is owned by Edmonton Airports (EIA).

What interest does the province have in ZVL? Are they planning on landing medevacs there? What department is paying for that?

The theory is that it will act as an alternate for air ambulance flights and other smaller aircraft, but not anything of size...they will still have to use Calgary as an alternate.

Project was being spearheaded by Minister Horner, believe paid for through AHS.

Tom