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Increase in crashes keeps Canterbury rescue staff busy

Author
Newstalk ZB Staff,
Publish Date
Tue, 10 Apr 2018, 5:47AM
Canterbury Westpac Rescue Helicopter crews attended 187 emergency call outs for the first three months of the year. (Photo: NZ Herald)
Canterbury Westpac Rescue Helicopter crews attended 187 emergency call outs for the first three months of the year. (Photo: NZ Herald)

Increase in crashes keeps Canterbury rescue staff busy

Author
Newstalk ZB Staff,
Publish Date
Tue, 10 Apr 2018, 5:47AM

An increase in road crashes kept Canterbury's Westpac Rescue Helicopter busy this summer.

Crews attended 187 emergency call outs for the first three months of the year, a 21 percent increase compared with the same time last year.

February was particularly busy with 63 rescues, up from 45 in 2017.

CEO Christine Prince says they also carried out longer missions over the period, with some taking between two and half and three hours.

"There's the distance factor to consider, but there's also the complexity, so anything that would involve search and rescue winching, and it may be a more complex scene."

Prince says the nature of the job has changed, with intensive care paramedics are also administering a lot more intervention at the scene.

"It used to be more kind of picking the patients up and taking them to the hospital. They are actually doing a lot more of the work at the scene, which means that the chances of a patient making a recovery are so much better."

Prince says many of the injuries or fatalities from car crashes are preventable.

"Accidents do happen but I think it's the instances where they go along where they would find things like people not wearing seatbelts and things that are difficult to deal with."

Prince says they rescued patients aged from one day old to 90 years old and 60 percent of them were male.

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