Examiner Community Awards 2015: Achievement Award — Yorkshire Air Ambulance
Today we reach the end of our countdown of the Examiner Community Awards before tomorrow’s glittering presentation night at the John Smith’s Stadium.
The final award of the night is the Achievement Award which this year goes to the Yorkshire Air Ambulance for its phenomenal achievement in keeping two helicopters in the air at a daily cost of £12,000, which mounts up to £4.4m a year.
This is only possible by the generous fundraising and donations from people across the county so this is a truly community achievement award.
The award is sponsored by Syngenta.
It said: "As principal sponsor of the Examiner Community Awards we are very honoured to celebrate and congratulate all of the Award nominees for their continued dedication and, in particular, the Yorkshire Air Ambulance in receiving the 2015 Achievement Award for helping save lives across our region."
Yorkshire Air Ambulance
The Yorkshire Air Ambulance in action on the Yorkshire moors
Every call the Yorkshire Air Ambulance attends is a potential life saver.
The speed it can get to people in either remote locations or next to roads clogged with traffic can often mean the difference between life and death.
Such a service does not come cheap and its annual running cost is £4.4m which equates to £12,000 a day.
But that’s where the people of Yorkshire come in because due to their ceaseless fundraising and incredible acts of individual generosity they raise enough to keep not one but two helicopters in the air in our county – a massive area covering four million acres where five million people live.
And Huddersfield is one of the top areas when it comes to fundraising.
YAA Director of Fundraising Paul Gowland said: “The generosity that we receive is the lifeblood of the charity and without this generosity we would not be able to provide the service that we are so proud of.
"The charity was set up in 2000 and with the addition of the second air ambulance in October 2007, we have developed into a sophisticated emergency service that provides state-of-the-art emergency medical care throughout Yorkshire.
"The swift medical interventions provided by our air ambulance crews have a major impact on a patient’s chance of survival and subsequent quality of life.”
The helicopters are available in daylight hours seven days a week, 365 days a year.
The first air ambulance is based at the charity’s base at Nostell Priory near Wakefield, and the second air is at RAF Topcliffe near Thirsk. Both helicopters can reach speeds of up to 160mph which means they can be at a specialist emergency centre such as Leeds General Infirmary within minutes of leaving most incident scenes.
Meet some of the people whose lives have been touched by the Yorkshire Air Ambulance
Yorkshire Air Ambulance factfile:
The charity operates two helicopters, G-SASH and G-CEMS which are MD902 Explorers They operate in daylight hours from Nostell Priory near Wakefield and RAF Topcliffe near Thirsk. In summer one operates from 7am until 7pm and the other from 10am to 10pm.
To date over 6,100 patients have been carried to relevant treatment centres.
Last year (April 2014 to March 2015) the YAA carried 596 patients directly to hospital and attended 1,326 incidents.
The average mission cost is approximately £3,318.
On average they fly to three missions per day.
Total litres of fuel used in the last financial year was 177,364 litres which represents a cost of nearly £11,000 per month.
The Yorkshire Air Ambulance is one of the only air ambulance’s in the UK to have a dedicated air desk for dispatch of the helicopters.
The Yorkshire Air Ambulance paramedics and dispatchers are provided by Yorkshire Ambulance Service.
Historically, the YAA fly to more road traffic incidents than any other air ambulance in the UK.
The work of the Yorkshire Air Ambulance has also been recently documented by the BBC series, ‘Helicopter Heroes’.
