People will die if Taupo chopper ditched: Mayor

Laurilee McMichael

People will die if Taupo’s rescue helicopter service is withdrawn — it’s as simple as that, says Taupo district mayor David Trewavas.

He was yesterday reeling at news Taupo is not included under the National Ambulance Sector Office’s call for air ambulance services proposals.

That’s despite the Taupo Airportbased Greenlea rescue helicopter being called out hundreds of times a year. It was called out 10 times during the four-day Easter break alone.

The new system will come into effect on November 1.

In the past 12 months the helicopter was tasked with 223 missions from medical emergencies to car crashes.

But given Taupo’s proximity to the Tongariro National Park and its alpine crossing, skifields and forest parks, the helicopter also spends a lot of time rescuing lost or injured hunters, trampers and skiers.

State Highway 1 runs through the middle of the Central Plateau and the helicopter is also regularly called to the mountains, where up to 130,000 people are expected to walk the Tongariro Alpine Crossing this year and where conditions can turn from benign to deadly in an hour.

On one mission this Easter it took a St John intensive care paramedic to a fatal car crash on the Desert Rd, where he worked for half an hour trying to save a seriously injured baby; and the next day it whisked a 2-year-old with hypothermia from below the alpine crossing to safety.

Pilot Pete Masters said without the helicopter, the tot would have died.

Taupo’s rescue helicopter was the first in the country, and came about after pioneering helicopter pilot John Funnell and local emergency services recognised that people in the region’s isolated back country were not getting the help they needed, with many dying before they could be transported by road to hospital.

Although the area might in future be serviced from Hamilton, Trewavas said the time difference — it takes at least 55 minutes for a Hamilton helicopter to reach the Central Plateau mountains as opposed to 20 or less from Taupo — would see lives lost.

“It’s as simple as that. It’s a life or death situation,” he said. “I was just devastated.” David Wickham, secretary of the Philips Search and Rescue Trust, which operates rescue helicopters in Tauranga, Rotorua, Taupo, Hamilton and Palmerston North, said the trust was blindsided by Taupo not being included in the request for proposal.

— Taupo & Turangi Weekender