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Luke Essery photographed by Danial Blake by Amanda Cranston
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF
AN EMERGENCY HELICOPTER RESCUE CREWMAN... True heroes, the EMQ Helicopter Rescue Crew operate 24 hours a day to assist in land and sea search and rescue operations, transporting medical teams to accident scenes, air evacuations of critically ill patients and evacuations in times of disaster, transferring patients between hospitals, resupplying communities isolated by natural disasters and then assisting when needed in fire fighting, oil spills and police support. Every day is different and the crew never know what to expect when they clock on for their shift. Constantly on call and ready to assist in any situation, the EMQ Helicopter Rescue team (previously known as Queensland Rescue) work closely with the police, ambulance, fire brigade, State Emergency Services (SES) and Australian Search and Rescue (AusSAR). There are five fully-equipped helicopters in the fleet, with one based in Cairns and the others shared between Townsville and Brisbane. With an average of two to three call-outs per day at the Cairns base, each crew member needs to give 100 per cent on the job because lives depend on them. Luke Essery is a rescue crew officer and joined the Cairns based crew almost two and a half years ago, and says it is a very physically demanding job but one he loves and finds incredibly rewarding. “I was a paid lifeguard in Byron Bay before I joined EMQ , but moved here for the job,” he says. “I’ve always wanted to work in emergency helicopter rescue and it is a great feeling knowing you can make a difference when you go to work.” With 10 hour day and 14 hour night shifts, there is always a crew of five rostered on at any one time. The helicopters are operated by a threeperson crew at all times comprising a pilot, air crewman and rescue crewman, and the doctor and paramedic are rostered on during weekdays but on call during weekends and evenings. While the crewmen range in age from 24 to 63, they are
all required to be in peak fitness. “For my job I need to be not only physically fit, but also up-todate in senior first aid and have my bronze medallion life saving qualification. I’m the one that gets winched down the wire in all rescue operations, and assist the doctor and paramedic down the wire as well as at the scene,” Luke says. Depending on the location, jobs vary in length with hospital transfers normally taking around three hours, road accidents between two to three hours, and search and rescue jobs ranging from a few hours to a few days. Other jobs can include accidents which are inaccessible by road, rodeo incidents, missing bushwalkers or divers and any accident requiring urgent hospital treatment. Luke says low visibility like heavy rain, low cloud or fog can sometimes make the job difficult, along with soaring temperatures, fatigue, difficult terrain and not enough details about the job they are going to. “And of course knowing the person in the accident you are attending, or having a patient not survive, that can be pretty hard,” he says. Luke says 80 per cent of their work is hospital-tohospital transfers, but nothing is ever scheduled and jobs only come up daily. “During the floods earlier this year we were helping out in Rockhampton and Gladstone, then had to take our helicopters to Brisbane in preparation for Cyclone Yasi to avoid damage,” he says.
“Following Yasi we were taking senior VIPs out to survey areas and because roads were closed we were delivering tarps to Ingham for those people who had lost their roofs.” There is no typical day. When shifts start the new crew do a handover brief with the crew from the shift before, they have a daily check list to go through for the aircraft and operational gear, and then a range of secondary duties if not out on a job. While EMQ are always looking at ways of improving the way they do things, Luke says the three biggest developments have been the new helicopters brought in three years ago as they have better safety and more power, improvements in GPS systems, and night vision goggles which were introduced 12 months ago. “The whole crew wears the night vision goggles every time we fly at night and we can now do jobs at night we couldn’t do before,” Luke says. “We can see anything that emits light so if we are searching for someone and they have a lit cigarette, a cigarette lighter, a mobile phone or anything with a small amount of light, we can see them.” Luke says while the busiest time for them is often wet season with an increase in stingers on the reef and Easter with the higher than average road tolls, any day can be busy for them, they never know what to expect when they clock on.