My friend almost died tonight

[Ecthy]

By the sounds of what you posted in the beginning it seems to have been the kind of accident that killed everyone just about one generation ago.

Best wishes

[Pekka]

any new updates?

[Mrs. Tuberski]

This is all great news glad your friend is doing better. With the love and strength from friends like you and his girl he will be i good hands. His recovery is a long one and he will need to vent frustrations but keep the beat and encourage him all u can.

[Hueij]

Dutch tv did a short documentary on trauma helicopters last Thursday. In Holland we have four of them, enough to cover the whole country. BUT... due to complaints about noise and pollution they are not allowed to fly after sundown. Then, New Year's eve 2001 several people died because of a fire during a party in a bar and people started wondering why the hell those helicopters weren't allowed to fly. People could and would have survived if they were allowed.

Politicians being politicians, so they took almost 6 years to come up with something. In November 2006 they decided to do a test with 1 (one!) helicopter that was permitted to fly in a radius of 100 km from the base were it was stationed (Volkel Airbase). If you happened to get involved in a serious accident outside of that radius: tough luck.

The Dutch tv team flew out a couple of nights with the helicopter team to do some shooting and then they came across Remi's accident. They filmed the whole thing and interviewed his wife, Jet.

They did a hell of a thing bringing their point home, there's is no way anyone seeing the images will oppose those helicopters from flying agaim after the test ends come next November.

You can watch it here (in Dutch): http://www.netwerk.tv/archief/435771...elikopter.html but be warned, it's not pretty

[SlowwHand]

Why not go that next step and allow no ambulances after sundown?

I'm not going to look at the clip, I'll take your word for it.
"Hi" to all, and .

[Mercator]

Originally posted by Hueij
Dutch tv did a short documentary on trauma helicopters last Thursday. (...)

Yikes... I saw that documentary. I thought about you and your friend, but I couldn't remember their names exactly so I just thought it was some other, similar case.

[DanS]

Noise and pollution?

Life flight may not make sense (don't know, to be honest), but those are lame ass criteria.

[germanos]

First: good to hear Remi might fully recover

Originally posted by Hueij
BUT... due to complaints about noise and pollution they are not allowed to fly after sundown.

This is cutting a few corners. From your own link:

De andere traumaheli's kunnen alleen overdag uitrukken, omdat die niet uitgerust zijn om in het donker te vliegen.

Translated: the heli's cannot fly since they lack the necessary equipment to fly at night.

Offcourse it could be so that they lack the equipment since other restrictions might prevent them from flying in any case, but this is not clear.

I do remember very well that after the 2001 Volendam fire (caused by recless entrepeneurs who failed to provide for sufficient escape routes and other criminal stupidities: it's THEM who killed their customers) the same accusations were aired that the heli's couldn't fly because of the environmental-fundi's preventing it, which was subsequently proven false.
Don't make it appear that it's only the medic's who can't fly helicopters to the heart of a city. There is no evidence at all that if the heli from Amsterdam could have flown to Volendam more lifes could have been saved, it's an assumption.

The report makes it quite clear that the benefit of heli's is the fact that a surgeon arrives at the scene of the accident in short notice, who can provide medical treatment that ambulance personel is not trained nor qualified for. Morever, Remi is transported back to hospital not by heli, but by regular ambulance, who appears to be on the scene before the heli arrives. I have no idea why this is, maybe the Radboud has no heliport whatsoever (the heli departs from Volkel), contrary to the Erasmus here or the VU in Amsterdam, or that the heli is not capable of transporting patients period, or for medical reasons.

This begs the question if the benefit from the heli cannot be provided as well by putting a surgeon on every regular ambulance. From this case it would appear to be even more beneficial, since more time would have been saved.