Council OKs Upgrade for City Heliport

Fire Department helicopters will be capable of reaching emergencies faster and more safely after the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday added 13 pilots and paramedics to the city heliport at Van Nuys Airport.

The council action came on the same day it released the third audit this year critical of training, staffing and facilities used by the Fire Department’s Air Operations Unit at Van Nuys.

The audit commissioned by the city from the Flight Safety Foundation called the facilities at Van Nuys “deplorable” and found “significant deficiencies” in the training for support crews, including paramedics. The study also offered 130 recommendations for improving the safety of all city helicopter operations.

Assistant Fire Chief Dean Cathey said steps are being taken, including Tuesday’s council action, to address the findings of all three audits.

The council voted Tuesday to approve $750,000 for the staff expansions at the Fire Department’s Air Operations Unit so that crews will be based at the airport, rather than surrounding fire stations.

“The paramedics have to come from outlying stations and as a consequence the helicopters themselves are sometimes delayed from responding to emergencies,” said Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski. “We need this kind of staffing dedicated to the Air Operations Group.”

Cathey said helicopters often have to wait 10 minutes for paramedics to arrive from nearby fire stations, but the audit released Tuesday quoted pilots as saying some flights are delayed 20 minutes.

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“Under this, the response will be almost immediate,” Cathey said.

The action is also aimed at addressing safety issues raised in audits by the state and city, which concluded that forming crews dedicated to air operations would allow for greater focus on training.

The state audit released last month also said the management of the unit needed to be reorganized with operations taken out of the hands of non-pilot firefighters.

The council action Tuesday included funding the assignment of a battalion chief and a chief pilot to the air unit.

State and city audits were ordered after a fire department helicopter crashed in March 1998 in Griffith Park, killing three firefighters and a child, the victim of a car accident who was being flown to a hospital.

The failure of a tail rotor has been blamed in a preliminary report on the fatal crash.

The audit released Tuesday was done by the Flight Safety Foundation to help the city in its defense of lawsuits stemming from the Griffith Park accident, but also made recommendations for improving the helicopter operations.

The audit was particularly critical of the Fire Department’s heliport in Van Nuys, saying it, the maintenance hangar and the crew facilities were “inadequate and substandard.”

Chief Cathey said the city is building a new heliport elsewhere on the Van Nuys Airport property that will address many of the problems identified in the audits.

Other recommendations in the new audit include:

* Limiting or eliminating moonlighting by city pilots, which auditors called “excessive” and a potential safety issue if pilots are not adequately rested for emergency flights.

* Institute a random drug and alcohol testing program for all employees in “safety sensitive” positions involving the city’s helicopter operations.

* Standardizing the city’s fleets of helicopters so that one basic type of aircraft is used for each category of need, making it easier to train with and maintain the helicopters.

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Cathey said there is no pending effort to standardize the city’s entire fleet, and he said issues like drug testing require labor negotiations.

The state audit released last month also found that the city still needed to take other steps to improve safety, including approval of a plan for regularly replacing aging helicopters.

“We are taking this first step,” said Miscikowski, chairwoman of the council’s Public Safety Committee. “But then beyond that there is much more to be done.”