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On January 27, at approximately 11.55 pm, 39-year-old Renee Mitchell, a mother of one who was attending a fete at the San Fernando Hill, went outside the fete to relieve herself close to a hedge.
The ground under her feet gave way, and Mitchell fell 40 feet off the cliff, rolling almost 20 feet on a declining surface before coming to a hard stop.
Fire officers were immediately alerted and made a valiant attempt to rescue Mitchell.
The rescue team attempted to reach Mitchell from the base of the hill, but lighting, bushes and the rocky terrain made the rescue efforts very difficult.
The fire officers returned to the top of the hill, lowered themselves by rope and located Mitchell within an hour. The officers secured Mitchell to a backboard, making it back to the top of the hill at approximately 6.45 am the next day, approximately six and a half hours after Mitchell fell off the cliff.
She was rushed by ambulance to the San Fernando General Hospital, where she succumbed to her injuries at 7.20 am.
Helicopter search and rescue (SAR) capabilities could have made a significant difference during the attempts to rescue Mitchell.
A SAR helicopter would have been able to winch down a paramedic team to the bottom of the cliff to provide life-saving medical attention to Mitchell.
[caption id="attachment_1063942" align="alignnone" width="1024"] TT Coast Guard in hot pursuit of high sea drug runners during a mock operation display in 2013. FILE PHOTO - FILE PHOTO[/caption]
Once stabilised, Mitchell could have been winched up and transported directly by the helicopter for emergency medical treatment at the hospital, where there is a helipad for helicopters to land.
On April 28, 2011, two of the four AgustaWestland AW 139 helicopters, valued at $2.1 billion, arrived at the TT Air Guard base located at Piarco International Airport.
The helicopters had both winching capabilities for SAR and Bambi buckets for firefighting in hilly terrain not accessible by fire tenders.
The helicopters were designed to operate in the harshest weather and environmental conditions in search and rescue, medivac, surveillance, law enforcement, drug interdiction and disaster relief missions.
The state-of-the-art AW139 helicopters were part of a $5 billion investment by the former Patrick Manning administration, as it sought to intensify border and maritime security in the country and within the region. TT's Prime Minister is the lead Caricom Prime Minister for regional security.
The AW139 helicopter contract was coupled with a $1.5 billion contract for three Offshore Patrol Vessels (OPVs), to be manufactured by BAE Systems, a reputable UK technology-led defence company. The helicopters were equipped with advanced defence avionics technology with the capability to provide live surveillance video and audio feeds to the OPVs for surface interdiction.
In September 2010, the Minister of National Security informed the Parliament that the cabinet had decided to cancel the contract for the three OPVs, citing delays and technical issues.
The opinions given by the experts on the technical issues, which were used to validate the cancellation of the contract, were never made public.
The cancellation of OPV contract downgrades the effectiveness of the AW 139 helicopters' border and maritime security capabilities.
In June 2019, the government announced that the AW139 fleet would be grounded due to budgetary constraints relating to the operations and maintenance costs for the helicopters.
[caption id="attachment_1063941" align="alignnone" width="878"] -[/caption]
In May 2021, during the passing out parade ceremony of recruits at the Tetron Barracks, the Minister of National Security announced that the government is seeking to reintegrate one of the AW139 helicopters into service to the Coast Guard as well as any other aerial requirements "in support of the business of national security."
The present status of this proposed reintegration is unknown.
In the meantime, the AW139 winching equipment and the Bambi buckets are lying idle and deteriorating at the Air Guard Piarco base.
On January 12, 2010, a deadly seven-magnitude earthquake struck Haiti, devastating the capital city of Port au Prince and its environs.
Thousands of people with serious injuries were trapped under rubble, while others perished after being crushed to death.
Haiti had very little search and rescue capability to deal with a disaster of that magnitude. Equipment to clear debris to rescue trapped persons and mortician services were utterly inadequate.
The death toll overwhelmed the very limited local cadre of medical, rescue, disaster relief and security personnel. The prison walls collapsed, and prisoners, including convicted murderers, escaped and were freely roaming around. The utter chaos, mayhem and carnage that followed were gruesome.
By the time foreign rescue teams arrived with equipment, including SAR helicopters, approximately 360,000 people had perished. Their bodies were retrieved from under the rubble, fingerprinted and buried in mass graves.
I survived the Haitian earthquake by being on the roadway in a taxi when the earthquake struck. My hotel had collapsed, and all the occupants perished. I relocated to the lawn tennis court of the nearby Caribe Hotel, which had partially collapsed.
The next morning, Emily Sanson-Rejouis, a New Zealander who worked for the UN, came up to me with bleeding fingers, crying out for help to rescue her three daughters and Haitian husband Emmanuel, who were trapped in their collapsed apartment located next to the hotel. I mobilised two other able-bodied men to assist me. However, the concrete chunks were too heavy for us to move. We could hear the crying sounds of a baby under the rubble. About 30 hours after the earthquake struck, other UN workers were able to join in clearing the rubble. Emmanuel and his two daughters, five-year-old Kofie-Jade and three-year-old Zenzie perished, having bled to death. The youngest daughter, one-year-old Alyahna, survived and was pulled out from the rubble with a broken leg.
According to the UWI Seismic Research Centre, TT is well within the range of several geological faults and seismic source zones, that are capable of producing strong (magnitude six-seven) and major (magnitude seven-eight) earthquakes.
In 1766, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.9 occurred between Venezuela and TT, destroying the then-capital San Jose and all masonry buildings in TT.
Earthquakes strike with little warning. Every second makes a lifesaving difference during rescue operations.
Therefore, two AW139 helicopters should be immediately operationalised, with winching capability to support border surveillance and SAR operations during a major accident or a natural disaster.
 
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