Today’s speaker was Margaret Wells, a volunteer for 9 years for Yorkshire Air Ambulance, which covers an area of 4million acres and 5million inhabitants.
It is a charity, relying solely on public donations and corporate sponsorship, without any form of government funding, and attending a daily average of 4-5 emergencies.
The service started in 2000 with funding from the AA, and their helicopters are still painted in yellow, the AA logo colour. They were initially based at Leeds Bradford Airport, which turned out not ideal, given its weather problems, and commercial operations interference. Much publicity and income was generated in 2006, when they aided in the rescue of Richard Hammond, the TV motor show presenter, and this enabled the service to purchase two new aircraft in 2006, before moving to the now non-existent Sheffield airport in 2007, again with the benefit of a further 2 replacement aircraft.
They moved to Topcliffe in 2012, with a main base in Nostell, which meant that they could reach any emergency in the county within 20 minutes.
Two new aircraft were purchase in 2016, for a total of £12m, but this time they were able to extract a contribution of £1m from the chancellor, Gordon Brown!
Two more new craft are scheduled for 2023 at a cost of £15m, these aircraft being the embodiment of a flying A & E Department, manned by 2 paramedics, trained to a much higher level than normal paramedics, and a consultant level doctor, meaning that operations can, if necessary be perform before patients are landed at 1 of 4 specialist trauma units throughout the county. Indeed, such is their expertise that land based ambulances, who may occasionally arrive on scene before the helicopter, defer to the expertise of the helicopter professionals.
Before common sense prevailed, the service was grounded for 3 weeks at the start of the Covid pandemic, which was also responsible for the service losing over £1m in funding, as they were unable to undertake their normal fundraising events.