mariomike said:
Wait till ice fishing season starts on Lake Simcoe.
http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/584200
( see side paragraph )
The side paragraph:
RECALLING LAKE SIMCOE, 1997
One of the biggest ice rescues in modern Ontario history took place on Jan. 25, 1997, when high winds created giant cracks in Lake Simcoe and cut off hundreds of fishermen and snowmobilers from shore.
Panicking anglers began calling for help around 2 p.m., and roughly 300 people were airlifted to safety by eight helicopters aided by surface hovercraft and boats in a frantic race against the setting sun.
A Canadian Forces C-130 Hercules dropped bright flares throughout the windy night to provide light for the 100 that remained stranded until morning – and to warn people that if they ventured out beyond their propane-heated huts they could end up in freezing open water.
The rescue effort lasted 30 hours, involved nearly a dozen agencies and cost taxpayers more than $300,000.
There were no injuries.
I was the 400 Squadron D Ops O for that one, officially designated "SAR PEOPLE ON ICE CASE NUMBER T97-0026".
We had collapsed 400 Squadron, 411 Squadron, 2 Tactical Aviation Support Squadron, and 2 Wing Headquarters into 400 Squadron, moved from Downsview to Borden, and re-equipped with the Griffon early in the summer of 1996.
The Squadron was dispersed between 18 Hangar (Ops, the A, B, and T Flights, and Maintenance Flight), S-118, now occupied by 3 CRPG HQ, (OR, Command Cell, and some of Squadron Supply), and another building in the P lines (Log Support Flight). 18 Hangar was supposed to have been undergoing a $4 million renovation and addition, but the funding had been pulled. Conditions in the building were extremely substandard. I had one computer in Ops, shared amongst about a half dozen people, and only two phones. There were no phones in S-118, so the CO was restricted to using his personal cellphone for all official business. Cell service in Borden back then was abysmal. He had it in some parts of his office, but if he moved a foot or two in the wrong direction it cut out. Phones were extemely limited throughout the rest of the Squadron as well - the old hangar did not have the wiring to support our needs.
I cannot recall if we had even received all of our hels by that time, but we were still struggling to get guys qualified - and our instructors had only recently qualified on type themselves. We had not yet been declared operational.
We had had several machines up flying that day, doing conversion (to type) trips, but ceased flying early as the wind increased to an excessive level. As the aircraft were returning, I got a call from South Simcoe Police that a couple of fishermen were trapped on a piece of ice that had been broken free by the high wind causing a buckling effect across Lake Simcoe. They had called home on a cellphone, communication had been lost during a second call, and the police feared that they had fallen into the water.
I began organizing a response, but had no authority to launch, and could not contact our CO for some time. I finally reached him, by which time we had two hels running on the ramp and ready to go with or without his approval - fortunately we had had time to refuel and none had been towed in, just in case. One was dispatched to the best-estimated location of the fishermen, and the other went part-way as a radio-relay aircraft as we had no other way to stay in contact.
We still had no permanent radios in Ops, so we kept our CP vehicle parked outside and remoted in. The antenna was below the level of the hangar roof, which was between the vehicle and lake and therefore hampered communications. We could not deploy the vehicle forward, either, as that would have cut us off at the hangar, plus it was immobile and awaiting parts.
We were far from ready for this sort of thing.
Conditions continued to deteriorate as the winds and falling and blowing snow all increased while darkness began to fall. By that time we had four hels airborne, all that we could crew. We were still short of Flight Engineers, so we tossed our Flight Surgeon in the back of one machine as the best-available substitute. The radio-relay hel had long since reverted to picking people off of the ice as it could not relay anyway, even at 4000 feet.
The Griffon has a static electricity problem. Static is generated as it flies, and it is worse in dry snow conditions. Due to electrical bonding problems between the plastic rotor blades and the airframe, it would build to the point that radios and intercom systems were rendered useless due to loud background noise as a result of the static build-up. Even turning the volumes down or radios off would not stop it. It took several years to solve this problem, but it was almost incapacitating that night.
Trying to co-ordinate locations and acivity of of our four helicopters and an air ambulance that was flogging around in marginal visibility and high winds and turbulence was a nightmare for those out there - fortunately for me, I could not hear it due to our distance from the scene, but there was more than enough pandemonium at my end to compensate for that lack.
Back at the hangar, I kept one of my two phones for incoming calls only, and the one that I allowed for outgoing calls was still reserved for critical matters. I was on it constantly. I kept a bank of runners to keep other sections in the loop - the only means left for in-hangar comms.
Despite all of that, we began picking up people all over the lake. Hels had to land beside fishing huts and get people out. Most had no idea that the ice had broken up all over the lake and that they were cut off and in some peril, and some had to be actively persuaded to leave - there was an OPP constable on at least one machine.
424 Squadron sent a Lab, but it only got about three-quarters of the way before being forced down by the weather. Nobody knew where it was, or its status, so I now had that issue to contend with. The crew finally called home a couple of hours later. A second Lab turned back to Trenton as well.
All told, we picked up two hundred and twenty people, many of whom had been drinking, and two dogs, both sober. Fishing huts, snowmobiles, and vehicles were abandoned all over the lake, and several went through the ice.
It was a long night, and one of our crews ended up staying at an airfield north of the lake as they could not safely make it back.
We found out that we had no way to replenish our bowser after normal working hours (we now have tanks and pumps as our primary fuel source), problems were encountered with NiteSun (thirty-million-candlepower spotlight) and FLIR, mainly as we had not got to the point of training with them, and our rescue hoists had been taken away.
By the next morning, it was all calm wind and bright and sunny skies. We recovered our fourth hel, and went back to doing student trips. The two yellow 424 Squadron Labs flew around a bunch, looking for any stragglers and giving the media lots of flashy photo ops.
