Episode 12 Emergency Rescue Down Under

They're the Brits who race to the rescue down under.

Multiple patients, critical...

Everyday heroes - saving lives,

battling fires...

You need to get out now! It's too late!

It can be extremely dangerous.

..and fighting crime...

-Calm down. Put your arm down.

-Police! Open the door!

..from the big city to the outback.

Our policing district is bigger than the whole of the UK.

From the bush...

He's been crushed between one of those dingo diggers and a Ute.

..to Bondi Beach.

The search continues for a British tourist who hasn't been seen

since he went for a swim.

You never quite know what you're in for or what's going to happen.

-332.

-Very high impact.

He's really quite critically injured.

Brits on blue lights under blue skies.

Today down under, a British flying doctor is fighting to save

a biker who is bleeding to death.

To try and stop this horrible pain, we're going to give you drugs

and drift you off to sleep.

Policeman Kurt helps collar a dangerous snake.

Can't go this way.

-There he is.

-Coming through.

And former Royal Navy pilot Kevin rescues a man bitten by a shark.

I recognised it was a great white straight away.

The damage was fairly massive. He took me to the bone.

Humidity, 92. Rainfall last ten minutes, two millimetres.

A storm front is heading for Sydney.

The air ambulance crew must meet it head on.

Thank you. The departing crew is heading for the Hartley area.

100 miles away, a biker is fighting for life.

Scottish flying doctor Caroline Macari's mission is to save him,

but the weather could stop her.

I have very little details, but as much as we know so far

is that there's two cars and a motorbike involved.

Rescue, 24. We're looking at 15, 25, I think.

The sun's shining in Sydney,

but the forecast for their destination is bad -

low cloud and rain.

Rescue 24. We will probably

have to go in via Bathurst, the Bathurst area,

and that to the scene is going to take us roughly 40 minutes, 4-0.

Copy. Understood.

To get to the biker, they're crossing the Blue Mountains,

towering up to 4,000 feet and wrapped in low cloud.

I have Rescue 21 that's also proceeding to the area.

Their ETA to the scene is roughly 15, 13.

They're still 15 minutes away, and there is an update on the biker.

The motorbike is a single rider.

The crew are currently assessing him.

High speed, thrown from the bike and he's currently in a ditch.

Copy.

Got a reduced level of consciousness or he's probably got a head injury.

And has definitely got a broken leg and arm.

And his heart rate is very low.

So it might be a bit of losing blood somewhere.

Another chopper is on its way.

Rescue 24, Rescue 21.

Just confirming, Nathan, you think you're going to get in?

Rescue 21,

the weather is looking good from our side.

There's a fairly high cloud base.

It's taken them 45 minutes to reach the scene,

but the weather is at least improving.

Looks like we might have a bit of right-to-left slope.

-We'll assist it on the ground.

-Yeah.

Ten degrees. That's pretty good.

100 to run. Are you clear of the trees?

They are trying to land as close as possible to the biker.

You got 50 to run.

The other chopper has arrived first.

Now Caroline is going to take over the victim's care.

Here's the orange boys.

British expat Russell Brown was out for a ride on his high-powered bike.

He was only 15 miles from home.

He's had at least one contact with a car and wound up in a ditch.

He had an unrecordable blood pressure and radial pulse.

Obvious open femur fracture with quite a lot of blood loss.

He has very serious leg injuries.

..No obvious pain in the pelvis.

He's also got a right humeral fracture.

Left lower limb seems intact.

He's losing blood, fast.

Medics have already started trying to replace it,

but it's proving difficult.

There's a first unit of blood going through at the moment,

and we've got a second unit of blood coming up in a second.

-We've had to put the tourniquet back up on this leg.

-Right.

Just because we're not getting good haemostasis with compression.

He has come up with that first unit to a systolic of 110.

-Yeah.

-OK?

-What is the GCS like now?

-GCS is 14.

Pretty pale and sweaty, isn't he?

So what...? Is that a big wound, or what?

It's about this long and there's multiple compounds between

mid femur and mid tib fib.

Have you ever seen him move it?

-No. I've seen him move this leg quite a bit.

-Yeah.

He was happily moving that.

He did have quite a bit of pain when we put the T-POD on.

-So he can move this foot, but this foot...

-Never has been seen?

No. And he hasn't had a pulse in it throughout.

We have to control the bleeding.

So let's go a little tighter with the tourniquet.

-Caroline, you happy with that?

-Yeah.

Russell's in critical condition.

He needs a blood transfusion.

Even with that, there are real fears

he may not survive a long flight to hospital in Sydney.

It's the end of another day in the outback town of Laverton,

500 miles from Perth.

And British police officer Kurt Whedon from Kent

is starting another night shift.

Tonight, I'm working with Sarah.

It's going to be a long night.

She's my other half.

Sarah is Kurt's partner, on and off duty.

She's from Liverpool.

..in the way of the handbrake. You want to move it?

-Where do you want it?

-Just away from there.

Their workload here is very different

from the way it was back home.

Just weird, Laverton.

It's one of those, it's either a flat-out, full, busy,

not enough of you, people fighting and stuff going on,

or it's like this.

Ghost town.

Doing loops.

But there's some action at last.

Kurt's just spotted a colleague

having difficulty arresting a dangerous suspect in a back garden.

-Is it a snake?

-Yeah.

Mind. Don't go that side.

Can't get out this way.

There it is. It is getting out.

Coming through, coming through, trying to get through.

-Was it inside your house?

-It was right on the front porch.

-He's going... He's going through that next garden there.

-Is he?

Just give him a good old yank.

-Standing on it.

-Come on.

It's in. Did it go in? Think so.

-Yep.

-Yay!

-I was going to catch it myself.

-Yeah, course you were.

Why are you getting it out of the bag? What do you do with it?

I'm going to take a photograph of it and then I'll go and release it.

Definitely a python.

He's got... He's got the barbecue lit up now, ready.

I'm going to get a picture of it and let you know what it is.

-Yeah, cool.

-Cheers.

It looked like a python, but we're certainly not snake experts.

The last dealing I had with a snake up here,

we thought we had it trapped

but it got away and it was a deadly gwardar,

which one bite can kill you.

I'm glad they did that rather than me. I'm not a big fan of snakes.

Or anything creepy that can kill me.

It is such a small place.

You don't get away from it, you know,

even on your days off and your time away from work.

You're still in this tiny community.

And I think you do get to a point where you...

You do feel like you've just got to leave.

-It's like being in a little fishbowl.

-Yeah.

Metaphorically and literally.

You drive round and it's such a small place

when it's quiet and nothing going on.

And also, everybody knows everybody.

And...you know, there's no escape.

The outback is notorious for wild weather.

And a storm is skirting the town.

The lightning has started a bushfire.

And Kurt's heading out alone to check it out.

We're well out of town. It's not a big issue.

The wind's blowing in that direction, taking it away from town.

It's just the type of real tinder-dry grass, so it'll just

go and burn itself out on one of the natural sort of firebreaks

that are here, these natural pathways.

When we get back, I'll just phone the local volunteer fire brigade

and Tiff, she's the lady that deals with this, she might come and have

a look and monitor it, but because it's so far away from town

and it's small grass stuff, I doubt they will come out to it.

It's just two weeks

since three people died in a wildfire in Western Australia.

There are up to 60,000 outbreaks every year in this state alone,

but this one's low risk.

Are you still in the office?

Do you want to get Damien or something?

Just get him to contact Tiff.

There's a bushfire and it's just outside the village and...

OK.

So they know about it?

All right, then.

See you in a bit. Bye.

So they already know about it.

Someone's contacted 000 to the fire brigade and told them,

just so they know.

Kurt's heading back to base.

Last year, we had a lot of people, we think, setting these alight

over by the golf course side and they looked pretty dramatic,

because it's all the...

Cos, erm, obviously the grass is just so dry, it goes up, but cos

there's nothing else, it's all low scrubland, it looks dramatic

when it first goes up, and then it pretty quickly burns itself out.

SIREN

I don't know why they put sirens on.

All right? Can you turn it off a minute?

You know where all the dumped cars are, at the back of the village?

It's that side of that and it's with the scrub.

It's quite away from those two houses, by all those dumped cars.

< Yeah, we know.

All right. Well...

You don't...

They're the volunteer fire brigade.

So they'll go out and have a look

and throw some sand about and some water, I suppose.

Back in Kent, a quiet night on duty rarely featured wildfires

and dangerous snakes.

But Kurt would like more action.

He's soon leaving the outback to start a new job in a bigger town.

At the side of a country lane on the edge of the Blue Mountains,

Scottish flying doctor Caroline Macari is hard at work.

She's fighting to save British-born biker Russell Brown's life.

We want to make sure your organs are fine, OK, sweetheart?

So to try and stop this horrible pain, we're going to give you drugs

and drift you off to sleep and we'll look after you

and get you to hospital, OK, my love?

I know it's pretty scary, but everything's fine.

She's going to anaesthetise Russell for his flight to hospital

in Sydney, 90 miles away.

Can we have a look?

Put that there in case.

Russell's right leg is shattered, and he's losing a lot of blood.

They're sliding a tube down Russell's windpipe

so they can control his breathing. Russell is now unconscious.

He's pretty unwell. He's losing a lot of blood from his leg.

He's had quite a large blood transfusion already, so we're trying

to rush him to the hospital to try and get that dealt with properly.

We just had to put him, for pain relief, put him in a coma

and breathe for him.

He's in a lot of pain and he was...

Feeling pretty unwell with it.

Now the race is on to get their patient to hospital.

But the weather is still against them.

Clouds sitting on top of the hills and below the hills

and even now it's probably only 600-800 feet.

We've got a thunderstorm to the north of us.

We've got another one to the south of us.

His blood pressure is a real problem.

I think it's his massive amount of bleeding.

He's got a huge wound on his thigh bone and a lot of bleeding

from that despite tourniquets even being placed on there.

He's already had four units of blood before we even got here,

so the main thing right now is to try and get him to the hospital

where we can help deal with it properly.

He might have bleeding elsewhere as well that we're not seeing

right now, so potentially his pelvis,

but yeah, right now his blood pressure is a real problem.

It's 90 miles to hospital in Sydney.

40 minutes in good weather.

Blood pressure's 95.

No worries. We've got to put another blood up, eh?

Russell has now been given five pints of blood -

half the total in the human body.

I can't see the left upper quadrant but the right and pelvis is fine.

I'm getting a bad view over there, but otherwise negative. Erm...

Is there anything I can do to make

-this better over here for you, or...?

-Well, his arm's in the way.

They're fighting to keep Russell's blood pressure up.

Can get the spleen easily, just can't find that kidney.

Get the right angle...

They're using ultrasound to try to pinpoint the source of the bleeding.

Don't seem to be getting on top of it.

-Have we stopped the bleeding?

-Yeah, well, we think we have.

RINGING

Westmead Hospital, good afternoon.

We have an approximately 40-year-old male,

high-speed motorcycle versus car, ejected into a ditch.

He has a large laceration of his entire upper right leg.

At the time of injury, it had nil circulation.

To control haemorrhage at that location,

he's also got two tourniquets applied to his right leg.

He's currently sedated and ventilated.

We're going to be on your pad in about ten minutes' time.

There's no improvement in Russell's condition.

This is the seventh unit of blood.

That blood pressure's not coming up.

So there's other blood loss

or it's something weird like a cardiac contusion or something.

I mean, he's obviously losing blood.

He could easily lose a unit in the arm.

And multiple out the leg.

If there's femur up the road then he's going to have exploded

a lot of blood out of it.

Going to transmit again.

Air main control. Rescue 24.

Air main control, replying Rescue 24.

Thanks. We have a patient on their seventh unit of blood.

Still got blood pressure 95 on 63, heart rate 142.

We're headed into Westmead ED. They already know we're coming.

I just need someone to give them a call, if they don't mind,

and ask them to make sure they've got the blood ready to go.

They're approaching Sydney.

Russell's condition is so serious,

doctors are being asked to send more blood to the hospital landing pad.

Thank you. We've arrived, Westmead. Thank you to yourself.

Caroline's patient is fighting for his life.

The team's experience has kept him alive

long enough to reach intensive care.

Now it's up to the doctors at the Westmead hospital.

Russell goes straight for emergency surgery.

He survives, but his injuries are so serious,

he's still in hospital two months later.

The dusty, red earth of Australia's outback means that keeping

anything clean is impossible, and in the remote town of Laverton,

that includes the local police cars.

It's Sunday and we're on day shift

so we have to do what we call fatigues,

so we have to wash all the cars, just get all the muck off them

for the week, just empty them out to make sure there's no rubbish inside.

Yeah, just make them nice and shiny

so that they're clean for the next week.

British officers Gary Simpson

and Lorena Cruz Parker are on a mission.

Great hose action.

We're the highest-paid car-washers in the state.

We'll take this out this afternoon

and it'll come back covered in red dirt again.

It's two in the afternoon and it's 40 degrees Celsius.

During the winter, Laverton can get, like, really quiet,

cos a lot of the indigenous people will move a bit further north,

cos it's relatively warm throughout winter there, so today, for us,

it's hopefully going to be relatively quiet.

But here we have a car.

SIREN

This driver's being stopped for a random check.

Where are you off to, just the pool?

Just to the pool.

Just get you to blow one long continuous breath until I say stop.

Keep going, keep going, keep going, stop.

Aussie drivers often face roadside breath tests.

The police don't need a reason.

All good.

Thank you.

Here's your licence. Thank you.

No alcohol. She hadn't been drinking,

and her licence was all good, so, yeah, good stop check.

Next, they're going to respond to reports of antisocial behaviour.

Neighbours have complained about trespassers in an abandoned house.

People keep going in the back garden, trespassing,

and it's just a continuous pain for us because people keep

ringing up and saying that they're not allowed in there,

so we'll just go and tell them to all clear off.

And obviously this premises isn't occupied at that moment.

Hello.

Hello.

You guys aren't allowed in here.

-No?

-No.

INAUDIBLE

..hot weather.

I know, but this house, there's nobody living in it any more,

so if you're in here, then you're trespassing.

Has someone been inside the house?

Obviously, you can see that it's been broken into.

Well, you guys can't sleep in here. It's not your house.

My God, it's smashed up, innit? Look at the whole house.

The squatters don't understand what the fuss is about.

-You know that this isn't Diane's house any more.

-I didn't know that.

You just told me a minute ago.

You just told me she doesn't live here and Cynthia said she doesn't.

The truth is, mate, you shouldn't be in here.

Yeah, I know, but someone gave me permission to come here.

-Who gave you permission? Who's that?

-Cynthia Munro.

-Why's that?

She has got no link to this address at all.

-And you know that Cynthia doesn't live here.

-And now look at it, mate.

-It's an absolute tip.

-We wanted to sleep.

We won't come back here no more, then.

Well, I know you won't come back in here no more.

No-one's going to be coming back here.

People in the town have just decided to come here and just make camp,

and as you can see, this place is just an absolute bomb.

There's hardly a window that hasn't been smashed.

The inside looks like a tornado's gone off.

No-one's got permission to be here. Now, look at all the damage.

That's going to cost thousands.

We've come here, we've caught people inside,

we've caught people in the driveway...

They need to come up here and secure it anyway

because people are just going to keep coming back.

We're fighting a losing battle.

He was just saying, you know,

"We've got nowhere to live, we want to lie in the shade,

"we're not doing any harm."

Now, obviously we do care that they've got nowhere to go

and they don't want to sit out in the sun, but at the same time,

if you look at the state on the place...

If the place hadn't been trashed, you might be a bit more lenient.

I mean, they're there, saying, "You've got to respect us,"

cos they live out bush, etc, but...

And I know, to them,

it might seem petty that no-one lives in the house,

so why shouldn't they stay in it, but respect needs to run both ways

and they need to respect that it's not their property.

The house was later boarded up to prevent unwelcome visitors.

-REPORTER:

-WS News.

The search continues for a British tourist who hasn't been seen

since he went for a swim at South Curl Curl on the weekend.

The 31-year-old was celebrating with friends

on his last day in the country on Saturday.

They say they lost sight of him about 100 metres from shore.

The sea is one of Australia's biggest killers,

and all of the British flying doctors and pilots who come to work

down under are trained to survive a crash landing into water

even before they're allowed to fly.

Follow the procedure sequentially. Slow the phases down.

And you'll overcome the fear that you've got to go through.

The first one's the hardest.

All right, guys. Hop in. Find a seat.

So blackened masks, primary exits.

So no change in what we do, OK? All right. Here we go, guys.

Listen to my voice.

We're flying along - double engine failure - brace, brace, brace.

It's a frightening experience for some,

but drowning isn't the only danger they could face in the sea.

These waters are home to several dangerous species of shark.

And former Royal Navy officer Kevin Ratcliff

is the pilot of the rescue chopper that is called to

many of the attacks on the New South Wales coast.

So I think that probably the conditions we can see out there -

quite a bit of blue sky, etc, etc, etc -

are quite well-reflected on the forecast with cloud bases between

2,000-3,000, but, you know,

scattered sort of cover, good visibility.

We have a helicopter available here 24/7 at Newcastle.

Folks on beaches and in the water

do form a key part of what we have to deal with.

These waters are perfect for surf sports, but they're also

an ideal hunting ground for some of Australia's most lethal predators.

Just tracking out towards the coast.

We're still about one mile west of the coast at 700 feet.

Three months ago, Kevin and his team were scrambled to

a remote beach 100 miles north of their base in Newcastle.

A local news crew captured what happened next.

There was a 65-year-old male

from the Tolworth village.

He was on a surf ski at lunchtime today

when we was struck by a shark.

On the lower left leg, he has some lacerations.

Dave Quinlivan was lucky to escape after the great white

grabbed him by the ankle as he was riding his paddle ski.

Shark attacks are rare here,

and police immediately closed the beach.

The fear was the great white could still be around.

We put "beach closed" signs up at the request of the police.

One of our members, actually, who was out paddling on his ski,

has been attacked by a shark. Don't know the size.

Dave lost a lot of blood.

The shark severed an artery in his leg and took his Achilles tendon.

By the time we got there, the guys had provided

some primary level of care that paramedics can do.

And then it was our job to sort of administer that higher level of care

if it was necessary by the doctor and the paramedic that we carry.

And then we transported him from there by helicopter

to the trauma centre, which is in Newcastle.

Thanks to the rescue chopper,

it took just 35 minutes to get Dave to hospital care.

It was the start of a long road to recovery,

after an attack that came out of the blue on a sunny morning.

Crystal clear day, quiet surf, clear water.

Perfect conditions.

The shark just come from the sunshine - I was blinded.

And it just come across the surf ski.

I recognised it was a great white straight away.

And then, to my amazement, I realised it had my leg in its mouth.

Dave spent two months in hospital in Newcastle

undergoing reconstructive surgery to his ankle.

But he knows the great white could have killed him.

The damage was fairly massive. He took me to the bone.

And once the shark let me go, I'd sort of gone,

"Well, I've got half a chance."

So I'm here to live, I'm here to tell the story

and I'm grateful for the people that helped me out.

Three months on, Kevin

and the crew at the rescue helicopter base have a visitor.

The man who confronted a great white,

and lived to tell the tale.

-Hi, Kevin.

-Nice to see you again.

-At last.

It's been a little while, hasn't it?

Two months, two and a half months,

-since we were on the beach doing something different.

-Exactly.

So you really can't put much weight on it at all, then?

-It's crutches all the time?

-That's right, yeah.

Wow, that's a bit of a challenge, isn't it?

And then with the bone damage

it'll probably be a couple of years, 18 months.

Well, you know, I guess after an injury like this,

you'd be a little circumspect, wouldn't you, about jumping back in?

For sure, Kevin.

I'll definitely get back in the salt, but with reservations.

And I definitely won't go where I used to go.

And doctors have told Dave

he will one day be fit enough to get back on the waves.

But he'll always bear the scars of his encounter with a great white.