HeliService USA Leads the Way in Offshore EMS

Allen interviews Michael Tosi, Paul Russo, and Dr. Kenneth
Williams, from HeliService USA about their Helicopter Emergency
Medical Services (HEMS) offerings for offshore wind farms. As large
offshore wind projects develop off the US east coast, the need for
high-standard EMS operations has become critical. HeliService USA
steps in to offer comprehensive EMS solutions, featuring a
fully-equipped paramedic-level air ambulance service designed
exclusively for offshore wind sites. Sign up now for Uptime Tech
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show? Email us! Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on
Wind Energy's brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering
Tomorrow. Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast
Spotlight. I'm your host, Allen Hall. As large offshore wind
projects take shape off. The coast of Massachusetts and New York
keeping technicians safe presents unique challenges that require
innovative solutions. We are here at HeliService USA's Hangar in
Rhode Island, discussing offshore wind operations, specifically
emergency medical services and search and rescue capabilities.
Joining us today are three leaders in emergency response, Dr.
Kenneth Williams, division director of EMS and Professor of
Emergency Medicine at Brown University. Michael Tosi, founder and
CEO of HeliService, USA, and Paul Russo, director of Operations at
HeliService USA. Together we'll be discussing their collaboration
to provide comprehensive emergency medical services and search and
rescue operations for a US offshore wind. Michael, let's start with
you today. And thanks for the invite to come out. This is
tremendous. Of Michael Tosi: course. You're welcome. Thanks for
coming. Thanks for spending the time, Allen Hall: as always, when
we come to HeliService. The facilities are immaculate, the aircraft
are immaculate. You run a really high class operation, which is
desperately needed for offshore wind in the United States, but now
you're expanding into emergency services rather than just carrying
technicians out to site and dropping 'em on the top of turbines,
now you're looking out for their health and safety a lot more. So
what does offshore wind in the US involve in terms of EMS
operations? It must throw a lot of hurdles at you. How do you even
approach that problem? Michael Tosi: Absolutely. Thanks for
spending the time today. A thanks for coming out and I certainly
appreciate the compliments. The first thing for us is always
safety, and it starts with your facility, starts with making sure
everything's immaculate before people get on your helicopters.
Regarding EMS and Emergency Medical Services offshore this has
obviously been I wouldn't go as far as to a contentious topic, but
it's been one that the industry knows there's some issues with. And
knew that they're gonna need a solution for it. Of course, there's
always budget challenges, but the biggest issue is you have folks
offshore who are isolated who are it's almost like a town out
there. At any given time, there'll be a thousand, 1500, 2000
people. If you run the numbers with all the heavy lift vessels
offshore. So at any given time, you're talking hundreds if not
thousands of people, and they don't have an ambulance service.
There is no ambulance service. Out there, there's, you don't just
call 9 1 1 and have a ambulance show up. Up to this point, they've
been using the Coast Guard. To a limited degree, but the problem is
the Coast Guard is also not an ambulance service. The Coast Guard
serves the entire region of New England with one helicopter. They
are out there for folks in the water. They're out there for sinking
vessels. They're out there for law enforcement. They have a lot of
other responsibilities. They're not designed to be an ambulance
service for several hundred, if not thousands of people offshore.
So what we've done with this program is filled that need because,
that obviously can manifest itself in all sorts of different ways.
Most of them not good if your ambulance service is not available.
Developers have seen the need to have an ambulance service to bring
folks back. Lord forbid there be any injury or medical conditions
offshore. So that's that's how we got here. Allen Hall: I didn't
realize only one helicopter serving the whole sort of northeast
corridor. From the Coast Guard side. 'cause if you watch the news,
anytime there's a severe storm, there's a boat that has sunk and
people that need to be rescued and they're co constantly flying
around trying to just do that. I didn't realize there's only one
serving it. So offshore wind being 30, 40 miles off shore gets to
be a real problem for the Coast Guard then? Michael Tosi: Yeah,
absolutely. And it's twofold. One, it's, they can't guarantee
anything. They have one helicopter in Falmouth. For these projects
up here in New England. The next one is all the way down to
Atlantic City, and that one helicopter in Falmouth may be on the
board of Canada searching for a lost kayaker. I also part-time
serving the International Guard. Every once in a while we'll back
up the Coast Guard because they're all the way up in Northern
Maine. And something would happen down on the island where I was
at. And unfortunately we don't provide a guaranteed response
posture, but if we were out, we would go look. So that's pretty
commonplace. And also they won't guarantee that they come because
they may have something of higher acuity. Paul spent several years
in the Coast Guard flying a few jayhawks and Yeah. He can speak to
a little bit about how that prioritization works Yeah. And how
they're covering lots of folks. Paul Russo: Yeah. Yeah. So it's all
priority, like Michael was saying, in terms of what the case may
be. If you've got got a vessel cell that's sinking offshore, 200
miles offshore or something like that, then that'll take priority
over somebody that may have a fracture. Or something like that on a
wind turbine. So the availability of the Coast Guard while they're,
listen, I spent, 14 years doing search and rescue in the Coast
Guard. I have the highest regard for my brother and my colleagues
there. But they are they're busy and to rely on them as a sole
source for evacuating your people. It's just not the solution. If
if you do indeed have a unfortunate injury offshore. Allen Hall:
Yeah. And building offshore wind turbines is complicated and
there's a lot of heavy equipment, a lot of moving pieces, and a lot
of people as it, it sounds like now, and we're in that building
phase in the United States where there's a number of construction
sites going on. So there's a lot of people, technicians out there
at the moment that don't have, maybe, don't have the coverage they
think that they have. Correct. Paul Russo: Correct. Allen Hall:
Okay. Wow, I didn't realize that. This brings in Dr. Williams on
the EMS side. Because what HeliService is gonna provide is EMS
services to those technicians that are offshore working on wind
turbines. You've been in the EMS world for a long time, and you
probably have seen everything. What are some of the challenges
though, of doing helicopter EMS work and making sure that they have
a program here that meets the high standards that Rhode Island and
the US requires? Dr. Kenneth Williams: Thank you and thanks for
inviting us to do this. One of the things that we like to say in
emergency medicine is that you've never seen everything. There are
always circumstances or conditions that come up that, that are
novel. And when I was asked to get involved in this project I saw
it as an interesting challenge and an interesting opportunity. In
my past, I was medical director for. A regular medical helicopter
service at the University of Massachusetts, which served both crash
scenes and inter-hospital transfer, but not capable of doing this
kind of work. And there's no regular medical helicopter service in
the area that is capable of doing this both landing on some of the
assets offshore. In doing the hoist work the regular med flights
and life flights are not equipped and not capable, not trained,
don't have the aviation or the medical training to do this. Their
aircraft are not equipped with the hoist. They may not be the right
configuration or power to do this kind of work. When Michael came
to us at the Department of Health I happened to be sitting in the
room. Because I'm also the state EMS medical director and it seemed
like a good fit for me to participate and what we've put together
in in very short timeframe and very efficiently with some great
help from the whole team here is of paramedic level, fully staffed
and fully equipped air ambulance that is limited to supporting the
wind farm industry. We're not competing. With the med flights and
life flights, we're not gonna be going to a hospital to hospital or
going to a crash on the highway. We're here just to support the
wind farm industry and we've done extensive training with a group
of paramedics and the group of flight engineer hoist operators that
we have both day and night, and of acquired an extensive outfit of
equipment that meets the Rhode Island standards for a paramedic
ambulance. So we have medications. We have a full cardiac monitor,
we have oxygen, we have suction. All the things that we, you would
get in a ground paramedic ambulance, we will have available for
people out on the wind farm assets. Allen Hall: Wow, that is huge.
And a difficult task actually to do that. It was Dr.