Add the Pilots, Paramedics

The Los Angeles City Council should waste no time in adopting its Public Safety Committee’s recommendation to add 13 pilots and paramedics, including the new position of chief pilot, to the Air Operations Unit at Van Nuys Airport. But safety improvements to the city’s helicopter operations shouldn’t stop there.

Paramedics are now drawn from nearby fire stations, causing waits of up to 12 minutes before a helicopter can respond to an emergency call. The paramedics’ dual role also hampers ground response time by leaving those nearby San Fernando Valley stations understaffed when emergencies occur while the paramedic is in the air.

Assigning firefighters solely to flight duties would not only improve response times both in the air and on the ground but would allow the crew more time to concentrate on helicopter training and procedures.

The recommendation comes from city and state audits initiated after the 1998 helicopter crash in Griffith Park that killed three firefighters and the child they were transporting to a hospital.

The city has taken some steps to improve safety since the crash. The Fire Department purchased helmets and straps--safety equipment that was not aboard the downed craft--as well as two new helicopters.

The department also recently moved its fleet of six helicopters to a larger site at the airport with more space to maneuver during takeoffs and landings. It is scheduled to relocate the crew and the administrative and communication center to modular buildings on the site by next month.

But according to the city and state audits, more can--and should--be done.

The state audit, released earlier this month, calls for instituting a regular replacement program for the department’s fleet of six helicopters. The audit also calls for improving training of pilots, for which there are great variations statewide. The Los Angeles Fire Department, for example, only requires pilots to have 500 hours of flight time, while the Los Angeles County Fire Department requires 4,000 hours.

And although the larger heliport is an improvement over the dangerously crowded former base, more needs to be done there, such as constructing hangars to protect helicopters against wear and tear.

Replacing helicopters and building hangars cost money, of course, money that would have been available had Valley voters not helped defeat Proposition 1 last spring. The challenge for the council is to come up with concrete plans and creative ways to fund what safety improvements it can--and to build a convincing case for the rest before the next bond vote.