Helicopter rescue paramedic taking step back
THERE are some incidents retiring rescue helicopter paramedic Ian Ridley will carry with him forever.
One of them was a mercy dash to the Southern Ocean one warm summer’s night in 2014.
Arriving above the Korean fishing vessel 105km southeast of Stewart Island in the nick of time, he was lowered via winch to the deck.
Fisheries inspector Marty Bowers had got his life jacket snagged in a conveyer belt, and lost part of his arm after facing a fearful choice.
‘‘The reality of how Marty got his arm torn off was the machine was pulling him in, and he snapped his own arm off to stop it pulling him in completely and killing him,’’ Mr Ridley said.
He remembered Mr Bowers’ stoic response throughout the rescue.
‘‘He greeted me with ‘how are you doing, mate?’
‘‘The first thing he said to the crew when we winched him back to the helicopter was ‘I could murder a Speight’s.’
‘‘This was a guy who had literally ripped his arm clean off.’’
He survived, and the men remain friends to this day.
Mr Ridley (55), who served his final day as an intensive care paramedic with St John on Wednesday, began work as a frontline paramedic in Oamaru about three decades ago, transferring to Dunedin in 1997 to work on what was then the Speight’s Rescue Helicopter.
He served as a paramedic crewman with the Otago Rescue Helicopter Trust since it first began operations with the BK117 helicopters the following year.
In an interview this week, Mr Ridley was reluctant to discuss the details of his own heroics over the years, preferring to pay tribute to his emergency services colleagues, particularly rural volunteer ambulance staff who, he said, did ‘‘an absolutely fantastic job’’.
However, he did touch on the moment tragedy arrived on his doorstep seven years ago, when his 23yearold son Scott was killed in a headon collision south of Hampden.
He missed being deployed to the incident by only a few hours, but it meant he had firsthand experience of the impact on families of the serious crashes he had spent a career attending.
‘‘Although these are other people’s tragedies, I have experienced it.’’
Paramedics were often asked about the worst incident they had ever attended, he said.
‘‘And it’s not a question I’ve ever answered.
‘‘Because at the end of the day, it’s not me that’s having a bad day, it’s the patient, and I’ll do everything I can to make their day better, because it’s not my tragedy.’’
Despite this, many in his line of work faced tough times in the aftermath of ‘‘acute’’ incidents.
‘‘I’m not trying to be some stonyfaced hard bastard, because I’m not.
‘‘How do we deal with it? I’m a person who builds things and makes things, and messes around in boats.’’
While he has stepped back from frontline work, he has been shouldertapped by Otago Rescue Helicopter Trust chief pilot Graeme Gale to manage the new dedicated rescue helicopter base in Queenstown.
He looked forward to spending more time with wife Ariana, also a paramedic, their four children in the blended family, and his grandchildren.
As for whether he would miss life as an airborne paramedic?
‘‘Aspects of it, maybe. I got to that 30year mark and decided I’d done my share.’’
❛ . . . I’ll do everything I can to make their day better, because it’s not my
tragedy