Japanese Doctor Helicopter

Georgina Hunter-Jones

Helicopter Life visited the emergency rescue department in Chiba, Japan

In 1995, Japan had a huge earthquake (known as the Great Hanshin Earthquake) which devastated the area around Kobe. Immediately following the earthquake the weather remained good, newscopter helicopters were flying continually and civilian helicopters were bringing medical supplies to the area but, even though the area was only partially accessible by road and the local hospitals were seriously over-stretched, twenty-four hours after the earthquake only one patient had been transported out of the area by helicopter. In a paper, written in 2001, about Japan's EMS service Wataru Nishikawa explains: "this is because there were no emergency helicopter operations in Japan at the time of the disaster."

Comparing this with the Los Angeles earthquake in 1994, just one year before the Kobe earthquake, Wataru Nishikawa adds, "both quakes were of about the same intensity and both happened roughly the same time of day...among many other similarities. What was vastly different...was the death toll. More than 64,000 people lost their lives in the Kobe area; about 60 in Los Angeles."

This is something that was not lost on medical professionals and government bodies in Japan.

"The Japanese Government thinks this is a very big problem," said Dr...