Rescue choppers rack up the hours

HOMING IN: A Northland rescue helicopter approaching a fishing boat off Cape Reinga, to uplift an ailing crew member.

It's been a busy summer for the Northland Emergency Services Trust (NEST), with more people needing assistance in the last two months than ever before.

The team flew 80 missions in January (recording 104.4 flight hours), compared with 76 in January 2014, while December was the busiest month of the year with more than 130 flight hours and 13.5 per cent of the year's 797 callouts.

The trust's chief pilot and chief executive, Peter Turnbull, attributed the statistics to an increase in the number of people flocking to Northland from elsewhere around New Zealand during the hot summer months, and locals getting out and enjoying the sunshine.

"Summer is typically a time when people indulge in some rest and relaxation, head outdoors and enjoy the sunshine with their friends and family," Mr Turnbull said.

"However, more and more people are getting into trouble outside - at the beach, on the roads, even in their backyards.

"We're typically hitting high 20s (degrees Celsius) every day at the moment, and that means we're not likely to find people sitting on their couches. We're finding them collapsed on the shoreline after getting into trouble in the water, on sand dunes after a collision on a dirt bike or quad bike, or in isolated terrain after misjudging danger."

Last week a man in his 50s had been flown to hospital from Kaipara's South Head after sustaining a back injury while four-wheel-driving, and on 29 January a young crew member needing hospital care was winched from a fishing vessel approximately 40 miles north-east of Cape Reinga, following a similar rescue on January 15 when an injured man was winched from a yacht between Lang's Cove and Sail Rock.

All patients transported in Northland Electricity rescue helicopters were cared for by St John intensive care paramedics, who travelled on each and every callout.

One of those paramedics, Ben Lockie, said he had worked with the NEST team for six years, and could see the demands on the service steadily increasing.

"There is no doubt that we are becoming busier and busier every year, particularly over the summer months when the population swells and pushes out to the coast and into some of the more remote areas of the Northland district," he said.

"The type of incidents we are attending isn't really changing; it's the volume. There just seems to be more of them."

That increase in demand affected everybody, but the team at NEST and St John worked together tirelessly to ensure that the service was always available.

St John paramedics were highly experienced pre-hospital emergency clinicians who played an integral role in providing medical care and treatment to every patient who was transported, Mr Lockie added, and he considered himself very lucky to be part of the operation.

Reflecting on the past year, the team attended 797 callouts in 2014.