Coast Guard Banned from Beamount

TallGlass

http://www.thejournal.ie/coast-guard-beaumont-3781640-Jan2018/#comment-6836490

Seems the residence association have managed to get a ban on the helicopter landing in there field. They now can only land at Dublin Airport, adding 20 mins to transportation.

I think that even if Beaumont hospital put in for a helicopter landing spot on the site they would still log a complaint with DCC.

Collie D

The association said it was “only a matter of time before someone gets knocked down, running across the road to see the action”.

“Or worse still, there’s a wobble on landing and a crash.”

I think those odds are much longer than somebody ending up dead because the chopper had to land at the airport.

Can't see their point of view at all.

NickNickleby

Appalling situation. I live within 10 minutes walk of the place, and the helicopter often passes over my house. When I hear it, my first thought is always for the poor person who is in such a serious situation that they had to be helicoptered in.

To be fair though, I always assumed the helicopter was landing on top of the hospital.

Landing should be reinstated immediately, and facilities then built within the hospital to permit landing there.

afatbollix

Disgusting.


Looks like the backlash is starting on the facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/Beaumont-Woods-Residents-Association-763445410465490/?hc_ref=ARQ1m0pL8ZNyNuzOAsTExcV9we4g7Gp6yELf4hjb8it35MmoDjsbn-TEXORG9CrjY-k

With head injuries, we are talking minutes to permanent damage.

Sam Quentin

Ffs

evosteo

That's an absolute travesty. They better hope none of their families depend on a aerial medical emergency. F*cking curtain twitches

odyssey06

"One member of the association told TheJournal.ie that they had been given the impression the use of the football pitch would only be temporary, after the on-site heli-pad at the hospital was replaced with a staff car park. However, it has been years now and the hospital has not replaced the landing site on its grounds."

Should our emergency services really be using a football pitch?
In my opinion this comes back to Beaumont Hospital, why haven't they replaced the heli-pad?
A football patch is a temporary stop-gap only, this isn't the Vietnam War.
But I guess a staff car park is more important!

If the residents object to a proper heli-pad in the hospital, then they shouldn't have a leg to stand on.

BowWow

The real question here is why was the hospital allowed convert a helicopter landing pad to staff car parking spaces in the first place? This is no different from converting ambulance bays at Accident & Emergency to staff parking.

Will they convert an operating theatre to a staff rest room next?

I've always believed that hospitals are run to suit staff needs and not patient needs.

Ben D Bus

BowWow wrote: »

The real question here is why was the hospital allowed convert a helicopter landing pad to staff car parking spaces in the first place? This is no different from converting ambulance bays at Accident & Emergency to staff parking.

I found this a bit disturbing alright. I'd love an explanation! I've directed an incredulous tweet in the direction of Simon Harris!!! I expect a response shortly

vicwatson

Can’t they put a helipad on the top of the multistory car park in Beaumont? Prob solved

Riskymove

TallGlass wrote: »

Seems the residence association have managed to get a ban on the helicopter landing in there field.

It hasn't been banned

The Coastguard have decided to suspend doing it until they have completed a "suitablility survey"

Tabnabs

vicwatson wrote: »

Can’t they put a helipad on the top of the multistory car park in Beaumont? Prob solved

Having some experience of this in the past; the structural, fire fighting & control and access issues effectively rule out add-on locations for helipads. They have to be designed specifically from the very beginning. Unless you have a spare bit of flat ground that may be suitable.

neris

BowWow wrote: »

The real question here is why was the hospital allowed convert a helicopter landing pad to staff car parking spaces in the first place? .

theyve a serious lack of staff parking in the hospital and they arent allowed turn anymore of the hospital site into parking. that landing area was a football field used by the primary school aswell.

TallGlass

Riskymove wrote: »

It hasn't been banned

The Coastguard have decided to suspend doing it until they have completed a "suitablility survey"

Use whatever blurb you want to spout out, the fact of the matter is the helicopter is banned or 'suspended' from landing in Beamount and it's putting critically ill peoples lives at risk.

Why can't the survey be done at the same time and allow landing? It's fairly obvious without a survey that a helipad is needed on site and what perfect timing with the works to start on upgrading the A&E to get it done at the same time.

The reason for the new car park, is a group of moanbags in Kilmore giving out stink about cars, legally parking on the roads around it. The thing is there still isn't enough parking for staff in the car parks. The solution, I would imagine would be to build a new staff multistory carpark with helipad on top, to stop all the moaners around both areas. That said they'll still give out stink about something else. Where they get the time for all this complaining is another question.

That said, Dublin Airport is a bit overkill, there are other fields closer to land in, Oscar Traynor fields are large enough to land or the OBI on the Malahide road actually lands crafts from time to time for training with DFB.

Riskymove

TallGlass wrote: »

Use whatever blurb you want to spout out......

steady on now.....I was simply pointing out the facts here...I am not defending anyone

I imagine the survey is about making sure the site is suitable and safe as a landing site .....not a survey to see if a helipad is required for Beamount ....clearly it is

markpb

vicwatson wrote: »

Can’t they put a helipad on the top of the multistory car park in Beaumont? Prob solved

You can't just land a helicopter on top of any building that happens to have a flat roof. It has to be strong enough to withstand all 7 tonnes of an S-92 being plonked on top of it. It also has to have enough space free of obstructions so that the helicopter doesn't crash on the way in or out. Even if the carpark did manage to meet those criteria, you still have to consider getting someone from the helicopter and into the hospital.

TallGlass

Riskymove wrote: »

steady on now.....I was simply pointing out the facts here...I am not defending anyone

I imagine the survey is about making sure the site is suitable and safe as a landing site .....not a survey to see if a helipad is required for Beamount ....clearly it is

Apologies, didn't mean to come across as harsh, reading back over the post.

I get what you mean about the survey, I was just getting a little hot at the thoughts of 10 committees and 20 reports on the issue, only to get it on the long finger of the government, we might see something built in 20 years. I do think a good solution is a multistory purpose build for staff parking and again purpose built helipad. Would solve two issues in one.

Out of interest can any of the major hospitals in Dublin accept aircraft landing?

Alun

As markpb says, one of the problems is that the size and weight of the S92's the CG use is such that a typical rooftop helipad would almost certainly be out of the question. These helipads are usually designed for smaller helicopters that would typically be used as Air Ambulances which are smaller and lighter. Also the diameter of the rotor and the safety area around it required determine the size of the landing area required.

vicwatson

markpb wrote: »

You can't just land a helicopter on top of any building that happens to have a flat roof. It has to be strong enough to withstand all 7 tonnes of an S-92 being plonked on top of it. It also has to have enough space free of obstructions so that the helicopter doesn't crash on the way in or out. Even if the carpark did manage to meet those criteria, you still have to consider getting someone from the helicopter and into the hospital.

Of course.

But why didn’t they do it when converting the old one to a car park? The roof of the existing car park is useless as is and could have been ideal. Beats landing in the hospitals neighbours football pitch so to speak

neris

TallGlass wrote: »

Out of interest can any of the major hospitals in Dublin accept aircraft landing?

I don't think threes any building in Dublin that can take a helicopter landing on it.

witchgirl26

BowWow wrote: »

The real question here is why was the hospital allowed convert a helicopter landing pad to staff car parking spaces in the first place? This is no different from converting ambulance bays at Accident & Emergency to staff parking.

The reason it was converted was because local residents complained about hospital staff parking in the area for the whole length of shifts. The hospital had to put additional parking on-site and unfortunately the only area available to them was the heli-pad.

The hospital has grown a huge amount since it was originally planned and built but unfortunately some of the auxiliary services such as car parks did not keep up.

And as for hospitals being run for staff.....seriously? Course staff should be a consideration. Without staff the patients are royally scr*wed!

RasTa

BowWow wrote: »

The real question here is why was the hospital allowed convert a helicopter landing pad to staff car parking spaces in the first place? This is no different from converting ambulance bays at Accident & Emergency to staff parking.

Will they convert an operating theatre to a staff rest room next?

I've always believed that hospitals are run to suit staff needs and not patient needs.

Ah yeah, those lazy hospital staff. Sitting around all day doing nothing.

lilblackdress

BowWow, if only hospitals did cater to their staff more then there would be more staff.... less issues. Hospitals unfortunately can't function too well without the staff and already have little enough as it is....

As for the helipad. There are hospitals in Dublin that have applied for trauma centres, If one gets the go ahead, that where all the helicopters will be landing and a new helipad will be built.

As for Beaumont residents objecting to the coastguard landing.... I get that it's a nuisance but for fooks sake.... they are landing for someone who has an immediate danger to their life and require immediate treatment.

It makes no sense to me when people sit and give out about emergency services.... they usually have not YET required their services

Storm 10

markpb wrote: »

You can't just land a helicopter on top of any building that happens to have a flat roof. It has to be strong enough to withstand all 7 tonnes of an S-92 being plonked on top of it. It also has to have enough space free of obstructions so that the helicopter doesn't crash on the way in or out. Even if the carpark did manage to meet those criteria, you still have to consider getting someone from the helicopter and into the hospital.

The S92 is 12 tonnes.

Storm 10

TallGlass wrote: »

Out of interest can any of the major hospitals in Dublin accept aircraft landing?

Tallaght only.

Storm 10

Alun wrote: »

As markpb says, one of the problems is that the size and weight of the S92's the CG use is such that a typical rooftop helipad would almost certainly be out of the question. These helipads are usually designed for smaller helicopters that would typically be used as Air Ambulances which are smaller and lighter. Also the diameter of the rotor and the safety area around it required determine the size of the landing area required.

AFAIK the S92 is not certified to land on a rooftop pad in Ireland or the UK. The UK HMCG use the S92 also and they can not land on a rooftop pad either where as their previous aircraft used were the RAF/RN Seakings & they could land on a rooftop pad.

In the UK in order for an S92 to land on a rooftop pad it needs to be able to support the 12 ton weight, the rooftop pads were deisgned to support 9.7 ton, the Seaking max weight is 9.5 ton.

TallGlass

Could the top of the car park in Beaumont multistory not be retrofitted? It would easily hold 12 tonne. There's spaces for around 50/60 cars. So if fully loaded that roof should support about 60/70 tonnes?

I still don't think the people of the area will be happy. Not only the complaining about the landing of helicopters also complaining about low flying aircraft at night.

I do hope they protest that last one by never stepping foot on another aircraft.

Odyssey 2005

Moaning and complaining about any af the rescue helicopters landing in the vicinity of the hospital is akin to objecting to a garda car ,fire brigade or ambulances driving down their road on their way to an emergency. They should be told to fook off,it's an emergency vehicle and can go where it is deemed safe by the crew to go, they are trained to the nth degree and safety is foremost in their minds.
They fly out to sea in weather that the people of Beaumont wouldn't walk to the pub in,and yet they can't expedite the injured party's recovery ,bu bringing him/her directly to hospital because of the small mindness of a fwe moaners.
Boils my blood.

PhoenixParker

TallGlass wrote: »

Could the top of the car park in Beaumont multistory not be retrofitted? It would easily hold 12 tonne. There's spaces for around 50/60 cars. So if fully loaded that roof should support about 60/70 tonnes?

I still don't think the people of the area will be happy. Not only the complaining about the landing of helicopters also complaining about low flying aircraft at night.

I do hope they protest that last one by never stepping foot on another aircraft.

Very different loading scenario between a single point impact load of a helicopter landing vs cars with no impact loading distributed across the whole surface of the car park.

TallGlass

PhoenixParker wrote: »

Very different loading scenario between a single point impact load of a helicopter landing vs cars with no impact loading distributed across the whole surface of the car park.

Yeah I thought as much to be honest. I do think they should build one at Beaumont, but I suspect the objections from people would be quite high.

Now would be the time to do it, A&E is getting upgraded, across from A&E is a car park, they could fit a multistory car park for staff with helipad on top with access across to A&E from helipad. Problem there is helipad would be very close to houses.

Other option is to fit out a multistory staff car park with some office space toward top levels and helipad on top. On the car park site to the West of the site, only reason I mention office space is some of the offices/workers on site are still in prefab offices. How feasible it is to have a mix like that I don't know.

It will solve 3 issues faced by the hospital, IE helicopter landings, complaints from people in Kilmore over staff parking cars around the area and the prefab offices on site.

I wonder why not or if they considered placing a helipad on top of the new RCSI building?

markpb

TallGlass wrote: »

Yeah I thought as much to be honest. I do think they should build one at Beaumont, but I suspect the objections from people would be quite high.

I suspect the problem is not local objections (the field in Beaumont Woods was only used 20 times last year) but the difficulty and cost in building a helipad that isn't on the ground. For reference, the S92 helipad at Blacksod has a landing zone of 30m x 30m and a clearance of 50m x 50m. It's an incredible size, much bigger than most people imagine would be needed for a helicopter. The current multi-story car park at Beaumont isn't big enough for a helipad. It's almost 20m too narrow in one direction. Additionally, the supports underneath the landing zone would take up a big chunk of the usable space on the floor beneath and I'm guessing the supports on the other floors would also need to be bigger, further reducing the amount of space available for the car park. Putting a helipad on top of a future car park would take up a lot of space (possibly more than they have available), be very restricted in the amount of parking spaces left and cost a fortune because of that.

For reference, the Mater applied for permission to build a ground-based helipad in 2016. This would be for 7 years before being replaced by a rooftop based one on a new building. They provided three reasons for selecting the location that they did:

The applicant has submitted a letter from the Mater Hospital Estates and Facilities
Department which states that the roof of the Whitty Wing (Adult Hospital) had previously
been investigated as a possible location for a helipad. However, the foundations were
deemed to be structurally unsuitable.

It is further stated that the proposed location has been
chosen as it is the only area that is sufficiently large enough to accommodate the full extent
of the downwash area generated bay an operating helicopter.

The applicant goes on to state in their response that there is no other location within the
campus that will allow an approach gradient that complies with the international standard
ICAO Annex 14 Vol 2.

This stuff is complicated and expensive. There could be many good reasons why Beaumont haven't built a helipad yet. Some commentators were claiming yesterday that they had applied for planning permission before but it had been turned down. I can't find any sign of this.