Copper Squad

In the past that remoteness meant responding to urgent medical retrieval requests or mounting searches for someone lost proved difficult for the town’s limited emergency service resources. But that is all changing, thanks to a resourceful former police detective.

MICH photo – Paul Sadler

“All we wanted to do was set up and replicate for the people of Mount Isa the same sort of helicopter services being offered everywhere else,” said Alex Dorr, a former Queensland Police detective and now CEO of his Mount Isa Community Helicopter (MICH) brainchild.

MICH commenced day VFR only operations on February 1 this year from a humble air conditioned demountable office adjacent to North Australian Helicopters’s (NAH) hangar at Mt Isa Airport. It primarily supports the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) to expedite its medical retrievals and assists the local police and fire service in providing a multi-agency response capability.

Dorr, 29, moved to the Isa in 2005, and was immediately taken aback by the town’s remoteness and isolation.

“All we wanted to do was set up and replicate the same sort of service that’s being offered everywhere else for the people of Mount Isa. ”

“I grew up living on the Gold Coast where you could safely say someone could be rescued by a chopper within 15 minutes or less,” said Dorr. “Out here the distance you have to cover is phenomenal. It’s not unusual for someone to sit in a paddock for a couple of hours or more waiting for emergency services to get to them. People accepted it, it’s just how it was. ” As the Police’s assistant search and rescue (SAR) controller for the region, Dorr saw first hand many times over the need for a rescue and response helicopter in Mt Isa.

“We have to do a lot of searches out here and we were forever having to go through mustering companies to get their helicopters to go and do search and rescues,” explained Dorr. “The problem with that is you could find someone but you could do nothing to retrieve them as most machines were two-seaters (R22s). ”

Mich Is Born

Frustrated at not having a dedicated helicopter capable of search and rescue, Dorr began asking Mt Isa’s local emergency services, the RFDS, the community and some of the mines if a dedicated helicopter would really be warranted.

“Everybody had talked about a dedicated helicopter out here and they all reckoned we needed it, but no-one had actually done anything about it. ” Identifying a very real need, Dorr invested his spare time during his policing days working to bring to the Isa what much of the population in Australia’s larger centres take for granted. In 2006 the concept of MICH was born and in early 2007 a three month trial using a borrowed AS 350BA Squirrel was undertaken.

“The trial went really well and so we put a business plan together,” said Dorr. “We approached some of the mines and targeted the resources sector for the finance needed to start a full time project.

Several mines saw a response helicopter as a major benefit for the well-being of their employees.

MICH’s main sponsor, CopperCo, was particularly interested in seeing a helicopter service become a reality and donated $750,000 to the cause.

“CopperCo has a mine about 140km northwest of Mt Isa and have been with us since the get go,” said Dorr. “They donated funds towards our three month trial and when we talked about the finances for the full time project they were the first on board. They’ve really been the linchpin that enabled us to really get started.

“Mining is obviously a hazardous occupation and a mine’s occupational health and safety emergency response is a very big part of their operation. For them the helicopter is a valuable safety net. ” Having been gifted $1. 6 million from local business, the community and the corporate sector, MICH has guaranteed its operations for a minimum of three years using a Bell JetRanger III, VH-HYO, on lease from NAH.

“We worked on having an operational budget of around $600,000 per year which would allow for a minimum of 250 hours and include fuel, maintenance, training, a pilot and two crew.

“I think for a community to put its hands in its pockets and donate this amount of money sends a very clear message that this is something the region, the community and business wants out here,” said Dorr.

MICH’s JetRanger, callsigned Rescue 32, is an ex-Tokyo Police machine fitted with a single patient stretcher kit, rescue hoist and satellite phone, and has provision for the installation of a FLIR camera and Nitesun search light.

“We don’t use the hoist at the moment as it’s too limiting,” said Dorr. “We hope to upgrade soon to a (Bell 206L) LongRanger and will then incorporate using the winch during our operations. ” An interesting piece of hybrid equipment being used in the JetRanger is a PC laptopbased business management, flight planning and moving map system.

“As long as we have phone coverage in the chopper we have internet access,” explained Dorr. “Through the internet and the ABOS (Aviation Back Office System) we’re using, our crew can access our whole office while we are away from base. Additionally, we use day VFR flight planning software which has all the WAC charts electronically. It interfaces through our Garmin GPS and what we end up having is a real time moving map on the laptop. ” Software also links the helicopter’s GPS with Google Earth, plotting its position over satellite imagery on the laptop.

“It gives us a bit of a heads-up on what sort of terrain is coming. It’s good for looking at“Several mines saw a response helicopter as a major benefit for the well-being of their employees. ”airports as there’s quite a few strips out here that aren’t in the ERSA. It never takes away from your physical recce, but it’s just another tool we can use to be better prepared. ”

First Job

MICH proved its worth during its first week of operations by saving its first life.

Gold Coast resident Ian Andrews was flood bound in a very remote area 540km south of Mount Isa. For six days his 4WD had been bogged up to its wheelarches and his food and water supplies were dwindling.

“We were tasked by Bedourie Shire Council to begin a search for him,” said Dorr. “Fortunately he’d remained with his vehicle and we found him dehydrated and hungry. He was very relieved to see us and we flew him to Bedourie Hospital for treatment. ” Then on April 1 MICH flew its first medical tasking, assisting the RFDS with the retrieval of a woman who had fallen off a trail bike while riding on a property around 50km to the west of Mt Isa. Not wearing a helmet, the woman suffered a severe facial injury as well as a suspected broken arm in the fall and needed urgent medical treatment.

The RFDS Beechcraft King Air departed from Mt Isa Airport for the closest suitable airstrip at Barkley Station.

However, Barkley Station was still 50km away from where the patient was lying in the paddock.

“When we were en route to rendezvous with the RFDS at Barkley Station they asked if we could land at the accident site and assess the patient’s condition,” said Dorr. “We were asked to transport her to them waiting at Barkley.

It was a quick 20 minute flight to the airstrip. ” Without the helicopter the journey in the back of a ute to the airstrip, across rough paddocks and on unsealed roads, would have taken close to two hours.

Arriving at Barkley Station the patient was stabilised before being flown back to the Mt Isa Base Hospital.

MICH is by no means only a medical retrieval service. For now, the helicopter is purely a ‘community helicopter’ and an option for the RFDS to use.

“We see our biggest asset out here is working with the RFDS and actually getting the doctor to the accident or getting the patient to the airstrip,” said Dorr.

“We’re great for doing short hops but we don’t want to be taking a patient for three hours in the chopper. There are airstrips everywhere where the RFDS can land, but a lot of the time the patients are out in the paddock or on the roadside.

“The RFDS is vital and we could never ever replace what they do just because of the distance. You couldn’t do out here in a helicopter what they do in a fixed wing. ” Thanks to MICH, far western Queensland and eastern Northern Territory also has a dedicated machine for disaster relief missions.

“If we’re to get another cyclone or flood up north in the Gulf (of Carpentaria) we can be tasked direct go up there,” said Dorr. “In past years they’ve relied on pastoralists and mustering companies to scrape together machines to do the relief work.

“Two years ago they had to get EMQ’s Cairns and Townsville machines over here for searches and to evacuate people.

So for future relief efforts we’ll at least have a machine that is in the area that can respond until additional assets arrive. ”

Bigger Is Better

Dorr’s vision is to become accredited through Emergency Management Queensland and be included in the Queensland emergency medical system.

Such accreditation will allow MICH to carry a Queensland Health doctor or a Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS) paramedic on its own medical response missions.

“We’re aiming to get ourselves recognised and into the state retrieval system and used by (Queensland) Health and QAS like the other community helicopters are utilised,” explained Dorr. “That would be a massive boost out here for the community, for Health, QAS and the RFDS. ” To be included in the retrieval system as an aeromedical asset MICH needs a to get a bigger helicopter.

“Running the JetRanger in the SAR role out here in the heat is challenging. Sothe priority for us is upgrading to a bigger machine which will also allow us to upgrade our capability,” explained Dorr.

“Our JetRanger was always designed as a platform to kick off to a larger helicopter – which it is doing. ” For now MICH is keeping with the Bell brand due to the engineering and maintenance infrastructure that is in place in the bush. In its sights is an upgrade to a slightly larger LongRanger with the natural progression from there to a twin engined helicopter.

“We want to be up there with a twin machine with a single as our backup like every other group, that’s what we’re aiming for. It will happen but it’s not going to happen tomorrow. ” Securing more funds would not only ensure the purchase of a bigger machine but will also increase the number of hours MICH can fly a year.

“We fly to a set number of hours per month so we have to make sure we have enough hours there to fly on jobs and balance with meeting our training and PR commitments. ”

Helping Hand

While displaying the JetRanger outside the gates to the 2008 Mt Isa Mining Expo in 35 degree heat (in April!), Dorr explained he was not out to “reinvent the wheel” when setting up MICH and sought advice from other Queensland based community supported rescue helicopter services.

“We had consultations with (RACQ) CareFlight and Energex (Sunshine Coast Helicopter Rescue Service) because we didn’t want to just go off and try doing our own thing. It was a matter of talking with these organisations when we were setting up our operations, our procedures and our training to make sure our standards were as high as they could be. ” Aligning itself with established rescue services has worked well for MICH.

“Our crew training has been modelled on CareFlight’s and Energex’s, meaning we’re on the same page and all doing the same thing,” said Dorr. “When volunteer crewman come up here from other services they pretty much slot straight in because our standards of training are up at the same level they’re used to. It’s the same if we send any of our guys down to do some work with them – there is not this big jump in the level of experience. ”

What They Deserve

Providing search and rescue helicopter coverage to an area spanning close to a million square kilometres in a JetRanger is no simple task. But it’s early days for MICH and interest in the helicopter from the community and industry is continually building.

In late May MICH had a win with the signing of contracts to officially allow Queensland Fire to use the helicopter as a platform for its own taskings.

“The more the helicopter is used, the more awareness will be raised in the community about what we do – it can only be a good thing for us,” said Dorr.

“Gone are the days where someone with injuries should be subjected to being bounced around in the back of a ute to get to an airstrip – it just shouldn’t happen. They wouldn’t stand for it anywhere else so they shouldn’t have to stand for it out here. ” Spending two years building an idea into a reality has been personally rewarding for Dorr. “To watch MICH continue to grow into a fully fledged 24/7 aeromedical rescue service operating a twin engined helicopter will be even more rewarding. It will become a service that the people out here deserve. ”