[St. John.s city councillor Tom] Hann admitted he didn’t know enough about search and rescue to say whether or not a faster response would have made a difference to the outcome of last week’s crash.
“I can’t answer that question,” he said. “That’s an issue for the experts. But the only issue that I see is that, you know, I think it’s needed. Everybody says it is needed, but nothing has been done.”
The guy says he doesn’t know enough to anything of consequence at all and yet he makes a proposal to do something to deal with a situation about which he admits his own fundamental ignorance.
On top of that, he claims the idea of having a search and rescue unit in St. John’s is an issue best left to “experts” but at the same time, he wants to push this idea because “everybody” says it is needed.
So who are the experts he’s talking about?
Here’s a thought: maybe Tom can get together with Scott Simms and discuss relocating the search and rescue unit in Scott’s riding to St. John’s.
-srbp-
Tom, don’t expect to get a job with Sikorsky sales update: Just listening to Tom Hann on a night-time talk show doing an excellent job of demonstrating what he doesn’t know. Tom is familiar with these subjects since - as Tom put it - “I’ve flown the Cormorant.” Flown one or flown in one?
Anyway.
Newsflash, Tom - Both the Cormorant (EH-101) and the S-92 are built to fly search and rescue as well as transport and other missions. Next time you get a chance to talk to anyone federally you might ask about the new navy helicopter, the Cyclone, which is…wait for it…the S-92 in another guise. When it comes in service, it will be providing SAR back-up for the Cormorants.
Makes you wonder where Tom stood on the cancellation of the EH-101s in 1993? It’s a bit like listening to Scott Simms asking where the Cormorant back-up was while the entire squadron from Gander conducted a squadron full deployment exercise last week.
The back up was provided by Cougar. Here’s some video of a Cougar SAR training mission. You’ll find a few other vids of this from different angles.
Once this is all over, Rick Burt and the people at Cougar need to take Tom and his friends up for a spin and introduce them to the superlative staff flying SAR missions for the company.