Ocean Ranger advice never followed, inquiry head says after helicopter crash
In the wake of Thursday's deadly helicopter crash off the coast of Newfoundland, the former head of the Ocean Ranger inquiry has questioned why recommendations made 24 years ago to increase search and rescue response were never implemented.
Former chief justice Alex Hickman, chair of the royal commission on the 1982 Ocean Ranger marine disaster that claimed 84 lives, said Monday the report his commission prepared included recommendations he has now learned were never followed.
"Our recommendation was to ensure that there be a fully equipped, long-range helicopter, with a standby time of 15 minutes during daylight hours, 45 minutes during night, be stationed near the nearest airport to the Grand Banks, which obviously was St. John's," Hickman said in a CBC interview Monday. "I assumed that was done."
Hickman's 1985 report after the Ocean Ranger disaster included the following recommendation:
"That there be required a full-time search and rescue dedicated helicopter, provided by either government or industry, fully equipped to search and rescue standards, at the airport nearest to the ongoing offshore drilling operations, and that it be readily available with a trained crew able to perform all aspects of the rescue."
Search helicopters in N.S.
On Thursday, as the Cougar Helicopters aircraft carrying 18 people to Newfoundland's offshore was in the air over the North Atlantic, all the province's search and rescue Cormorant helicopters were in Nova Scotia on a training exercise.
Had the helicopters been in the province, they would have been on standby in Gander, in central Newfoundland.
"In hindsight at least, one would have expected that one helicopter would have remained at its station, while these exercises were being carried out," Hickman said. "But I guess that will be for the authorities, when they inquire into this tragedy, to determine."
Hickman said even if the search crews were in Gander, that doesn't take away from the fact that there should have been dedicated search and rescue capacity in St. John's, closest to the offshore industry.
Extra hour for rescue time
On Friday, Maj. Dennis McGuire of the Search and Rescue Co-ordination Centre said it took at least one extra hour for the Cormorants to arrive at the scene of the crash, which claimed 17 lives, 65 kilometres off St. John's.
"We could never predict where an incident might happen," McGuire said. "Obviously if the incident happened in the southwest area of the island, they would have been there much quicker. So we have to take every opportunity to get the training done."
Cougar Helicopters, which makes numerous flights daily, transporting workers to Newfoundland's offshore, is based in St. John's and responded to the crash Thursday, as is the arrangement when Cormorant helicopters are unavailable.
However, McGuire said although the Cougar helicopters have some search and rescue capacity, they do not have the full capacity that military dedicated helicopters do.
Meanwhile, Hickman maintains it was the responsibility of the Canadian government to ensure the recommendations of his 1985 report were implemented, if they found them acceptable.
Hickman said Monday he was certain that after the report was delivered 24 years ago, the government of the time did find them acceptable.