SMURD helicopter crashes in the Republic of Moldova
A helicopter of the Romanian Mobile Emergency Service for Resuscitation and Extrication, SMURD, on Thursday crashed in the Republic of Moldova while trying to reach a patient in Romanias neighboring country.
Leyla Cheamil, 03.06.2016, 00:26
A pilot, a co-pilot, a doctor and a nurse died on Thursday after a SMURD helicopter flying them to Moldovas Cantemir County crashed close to the Romanian border. It was the last mission for the rescue team flying to help transfer, to a hospital in Chisinau, a patient who had just suffered a heart-attack.
According to eyewitness reports, the aircraft crashed due to the bad weather, as visibility was very low. The aircraft caught fire upon hitting the ground, leaving the four people onboard no chances of survival. Shortly after impact, the site of the crash was located, nearby a local forest. Built in August 2014, the helicopter had passed all safety inspections, the most recent one in February 2016. The pilot had over 4,000 hours of fly time.
Monica Dajbog, spokesperson for the Romanian Interior Ministry, gave us more details: The pilot had a rich experience. He had 4,181 hours of fly time, while the co-pilot had 1,480 hours of fly time. The doctor had been going on SMURD helicopter missions for 5 years, while the nurse had been flying on similar operations for 11 years.
Military prosecutors in Bucharest have started a criminal investigation into this case, while a mixed committee of specialists from Romania and the Republic of Moldova are conducing inquiries into the circumstances of the crash. The two countries have an ongoing cooperation agreement in the field of emergency situations, which also covers joint rescue missions involving helicopters of the SMURD emergency service.
The protocol was signed in February 2014 and is part of a wider agreement on cross-border cooperation between Romania, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine. A SMURD center was opened in Balti, equipped with ambulances provided by the Romanian state. Helicopters from Iasi and Galati have already been on 19 rescue missions in the Republic of Moldova. The last several years have seen several air crashes involving medical personnel.
The last such incident was over a year and a half ago, when a SMURD helicopter, carrying the pilot, the co-pilot, a doctor and a nurse, crashed in the Siutghiol Lake in south-eastern Romania. Another tragedy that shook Romanias emergency medical system occurred in January 2014, when two people were killed and another five were injured after their plane crash-landed in the Apuseni Mountains, at an altitude of 1,400 meters. The team was flying from Bucharest to Oradea to collect the liver of a donor who had just died of a stroke.
