CALLS have been made for a designated landing pad for a rescue helicopter, after five Limerick people were airlifted out of Kilkee over a two-week period. Rescue services cleared the local golf-course twice in the last fortnight in order to land the Shannon Coastguard helicopter as there is designated landing pad in the popular seaside resort. Manuel di Lucia of the voluntary Kilkee Marine Rescue Service said it would cost relatively little – in the region of €30,000 – to construct the helipad.
“It’s a fair distance to have to transport someone with serious injuries from the rescue centre to the golf course and it has to be done in either an ambulance or a car. That’s not at all good when there’s a casualty with those kind of injures,” he told the Limerick Post.
Nor is the golf course an ideal landing place although the club has been “very co-operative,” Mr di Lucia said.
“You have to clear the course and the downdraft is so big that it blew all the sand out of the bunker both times,” he said.
Referring to concerns the rescue service have about the lack of a landing pad in the resort, he said this could have the most serious consequences for a badly injured person.
In the last two weeks, the helicopter was called in to airlift a teenage boy with head injuries who had dived into the sea and hit underwater concrete.
In a separate incident, Mayor Gerry McLoughlin’s sister-in-law slipped on the edge of the pier and fell 10 feet on to hard ground as the tide was out.
On the same day, three divers from the Limerick Sub Aqua Club had to be airlifted to hospital because they had to surface too quickly due to an equipment malfunction.
“They were rushed to hospital to be treated for risk of ‘the bends’ which can be fatal. The helicopter lifted all four together on that occasion,” said Mr di Lucia who added:
“This could be funded by the county council and the Department of Transport via the coastguard service. If we had five such landing pads around the coast it would be much safer and easier.”
Mayor McLoughlin said that he supports the call, given the popularity of Kilkee as a destination for Limerick people.
“The rescue people provide an unbelievable service and anything which can be done to help them should be done,” he said.
“ Landing a helicopter that size is no easy task – it takes a crew. Getting an injured person to the helicopter is complicated by traffic and the contours of the ground. It’s not even, so the patient has to be carried the last bit of the way”.
The Mayor also expressed concern for the helicopter crew.
“A golf club hardly has ideal health and safety conditions for landing a machine of that size,” he told the Limerick Post
