The Bay of Islands Volunteer Search and Rescue Group spent the past weekend learning about helicopter safety and rescues.
Adam Gaudet is the team’s Training Coordinator. He says that 27 of BOISAR’s 40 members took part in the training on Saturday with Newfoundland Helicopters. Gaudet says they dealt with wide variety of skills and topics — taking searchers into remote search areas, providing an aerial platform for searchers, and rapidly accessing and extracting injured subjects from the backcountry. He told BayFM that everyone had a safety briefing from the pilot. And to top off the day, they had a chance to go for a flight.
Gaudet says the biggest risk with performing searches with a helicopter is to always be mindful of the rotors, especially the tail – his best advice is to stay away from the back and keep low.
