Pete Bevington

24 May, 2009

SHETLAND coastguard were forced to call in their colleagues from Stornoway over the weekend after two medical emergencies struck at the same time.

At 7pm on Saturday the coastguard helicopter Rescue 102 was scrambled from Sumburgh to fly 95 miles north east to airlift a crewman off the Peterhead registered fishing boat Nordfjordur, who had suffered an acute allergic reaction after eating a megrim.

At 7.30pm, as the chopper was on its way to collect the fisherman and take him to Lerwick’s Gilbert Bain Hospital, the coastguard received another emergency call from the BP operated Petrojarl Foinaven floating production, storage and offloading vessel (FPSO) west of Shetland, where an oil worker had taken seriously ill.

The coastguard initially called on BP’s Sumburgh-based search and rescue ‘Jigsaw’ helicopter operated by Bond Helicopters, but the aircraft was out of action for maintenance.

Coastguard officers in Lerwick then called Stornoway coastguard, whose Rescue 100 chopper was at Raigmore Hospital, Inverness, after transferring a 15 month old baby from Lochinver.

The Stornoway crew flew to the oil field 120 miles west of Shetland and took the sick man back to their base so he could be taken to the Western Isles Hospital.