Helicopters are often the only transport system that works when major disasters happen. But Hurricane Katrina showed that a nation doesn't always know what it has available
Hurricane Katrina should have taught governments some lessons about researching - in advance - what their national disaster management assets are, and having a system to access and manage them all.
All natural disasters seem to have one thing in common: a critical part of any effective human response to them entails the use of helicopters, sometimes on a grand scale. The reason is simple: floods, tsunami, earthquakes and wind are all destroyers of infrastructure. When roads are destroyed, landline communications are down, or when water covers what used to be land, helicopters are often the only form of transport.
A man-made disaster, like simultaneous terrorist attacks on critical urban transport systems or other parts of the infrastructure, can create traffic gridlock that prevents casualties from being evacuated by road from the scene of an explosion - or multiple explosions.
Helicopters are not available everywhere disasters happen, but even where there are plenty of them within operating range, they will not necessarily be available. There are many reasons for this, but most of the difficulties occur because many different agencies, organisations, companies or private individuals own and control the helicopters.
There is no operationally useful central record of most countries' helicopter assets. The military know what they have, the police likewise, permanent search and rescue or coastguard assets are quantified and coordinated, but helicopter emergency medical service assets are not centrally owned or controlled.
The results of this lack of asset accounting and co-ordination is one of the great lessons from Katrina. Last week, at the UK Royal Aeronautical Society's conference on "The future for public service helicopters 2007 to 2016", it gradually became clear to all the different helicopter operating agencies and individuals present that, in a really large-scale disaster in the UK, no-one knows what helicopter assets could realistically be called upon. More than that, how would large numbers of helicopters attending the scene of a major emergency be co-ordinated, and who would be responsible for controlling the airborne operation?
The local police force is the default organisation for taking command of a land-based emergency in the UK, but the police services have no expertise in controlling airborne operations. The Royal Air Force does, but would the police let them take control of a critical part of the total operation? Besides which, the police force is regionalised, and those forces that have helicopters (most of them) tend to guard carefully the control of their personal asset. There is a move toward the co-operative use of air assets among regional police forces, but the system does not exist yet.
Emergency medical service operators are almost all charitable foundations associated with a hospital or healthcare trust. If there was a national emergency need for them - or some of them - what would the mechanism be for locating those with appropriate capabilities and seeking their co-operation?
Would a federal agency be a good idea? When Hurricane Katrina happened, the US Federal Emergency Management Agency was out of its depth. Describing its part in Katrina to the RAeS conference, the US Helicopter Association International's director flight operations and technical services Harold Summers just shook his head slowly with his face down. The US helicopter industry's reaction was, in contrast, a revelation. Hundreds of private operators flew in and did whatever they saw needed doing. There was no co-ordination and - fortunately - no serious accidents. But New Orleans airport became, as Summers described it, the biggest triage centre the USA had ever seen.
Since then, the HAI has been assembling a database of helicopter assets. It is clear the UK has plenty of such assets, but no system for co-ordinating them all to best advantage under emergency conditions. Summers warned against a centralised agency. Facilitating the joint operation of the existing assets and expertise is what is required, he says. We agree.
Source: Flight International
