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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Are offshore choppers safe?

By: The St. John's Telegram

30/11/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

Wednesday, federal NDP defence critic Jack Harris appeared before the Wells inquiry and argued the inquiry needs to broaden its mandate and hear testimony from Department of National Defence and Canadian Forces (DND/CF) officials about how search and rescue (SAR) works.

Inquiry commissioner Robert Wells agreed, saying it's hard for him to analyze how well search and rescue works "without knowing exactly what the Department of National Defence SAR does." Wells has asked the DND/CF to provide a witness who can testify about SAR response. To do so, Wells had to check and see if he was overstepping the mandate of his commission -- and has decided he did not overstep.

While that might be good news, it would be better if this inquiry were far broader.

This is a harsh point to make, but the inquiry -- as it is currently constituted -- is very much closing the barn door after the horse has already left.

It's talking about helicopter safety after a specific crash, and that's fundamentally where the inquiry begins and ends.

That's not to say that its work isn't valuable and important. It is. Wells' recommendations will no doubt lead to changes in helicopter travel to and from Newfoundland and Labrador's offshore platforms and may ripple far more widely, making significant changes in other parts of the oil industry -- and perhaps in mining and tourism and other areas where there are significant concerns about helicopter safety.

But it's also a lost opportunity. There are a huge number of areas where offshore safety could be examined -- and could be examined before we have a tragedy that forces more retrospective concern.

Are offshore helicopters safe? Should we be examining ways to make them safer, or should we be asking if helicopters are the best method to transport workers to offshore platforms as well? Are the industry's offshore safety standards capable of withstanding a rigorous review? Are offshore escape systems reasonable and functional? We're already involved in an inquiry where a helicopter crashed -- and that helicopter failed a specific test of its ability to operate with a rapid loss of oil from its main gearbox. The manufacturer walked around that test by sayings the loss of oil was an extremely remote occurrence. Not remote enough, apparently.

In other words, the helicopter was able to meet paper standards and rules, but may not have met the level of performance it needed to.

While we're looking at helicopters, why aren't we looking at the possibility of having performance standards, not only for aircraft, but for escape systems and lifeboats? Do the current life-safety systems work well enough in our particular combination of weather conditions, sea-state, and the sheer distance of our offshore facilities from any kind of help? Are standby vessels able to help, or would they merely be forced to stand by and watch tragedy unfold? Have we met the safety needs offshore, or are we happy enough checking off boxes about the paper standards that are met, all the while turning a blind eye to real-world circumstances?

If there's a problem with this inquiry, it's one that the commissioner has started to spell out: it's limited to a specific event. If we're lucky, the recommendations will help to prevent similar occurrences.

In other words, it will close one barn door.

It just seems like we're content to leave other ones open until they have their own specific disaster to deal with.

-- The Canadian Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 30, 2009 A14

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