Island Life Magazine Ltd February / March 2016 | Page 32

INTERVIEW

999
‘Superheroes’

- saving Island lives!

T

hey’re the men and women whose
expertise and clear, cool thinking
makes them, quite literally, a team
of ‘Superheroes’ – and the good news
is that, as of January 23rd, these local
life-savers are now on call for even longer
hours every day.
The Hampshire and Isle of Wight Air
Ambulance (HIOWAA) has introduced a
night-flying service, enabling it to extend
its service from 12 to 19 hours every day,
and now operating from 7am until 2am.
That means the charity’s specialist
paramedics and doctors can now provide
cover for those fraught night-time hours,
when, according to Chief Executive Alex
Lochrane, rush-hour traffic and city night
life can often lead to higher levels of
accidents and critical injuries.
Preparations for the launch of the night
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service had been going on for two years,
and then in earnest since last autumn,
when the Southampton-based charity
took delivery of a new, state-of-the-art
helicopter with capability for night flying.
The enhanced model H135 was
delivered to HIOWAA’s airbase at
Thruxton on October 25, and then crews
launched into a series of intensive night
training exercises.
According to Alex, this involved them
in learning, among other things, how to
work with high-tech night vision goggles,
which, he jokes, “make the paramedics
look like Arnold Schwarzenegger!”
By January 23rd, the team was all
trained and ready to go – although,
because of adverse weather conditions,
it wasn’t until a few days later that they
undertook their first night-time mission,

to a road accident involving a teenage
cyclist with a severe head injury. Thanks
to the team’s prompt action, which
involved having to induce a coma, the
youngster was sitting up in bed 48 hours
later.
“We’re able to transcend all the
bureaucracy of the NHS and get to
the person when they need it most”
explains Alex. “That first 60 minutes,
or what we call the ‘golden hour’, can
often determine not just the survival
of the patient, but their quality of life
afterwards.”
Incidents on the Isle of Wight may
be less likely to be road accident or
attack-related than in the larger cities
of Hampshire – but the Air Ambulance
can still be seen regularly coming in and
out of Newport, often airlifting seriously