April 7, 2008: Survival Flight
 

http://cellar.org/2008/survivalflight.jpg

Yesterday afternoon, we went to play paintball. Today, we found out about the drama that ensued at the site before we arrived. A smoke bomb gone wrong, two men injured. One may lose an eye. Or it may be saved thanks to the prompt arrival of the survival flight chopper. Here they are being taken away....

It worked well for the military, starting in the Korean war. There's no reason it shouldn't work as well for civilians, outside the cities where there's no place to land. Of course in the cities, the hospitals should be close anyway.

I took a clip of an air ambulance leaving Woolwich Town Hall Square the other week, but deleted it by accident. It was amazing seeing a helicopter take off from a small patch of grass in the middle of a London shopping area.

I landed in one at the San Jose Airport between runways. It promptly blew a big black trash bag up off the ground that got stuck on the the main rotor.. That was one pissed pilot, as that meant a turbine shut down and restart. LOL

The picture doesn't show unless I hit the Reply function.

Oh right, sorry about that; I have to make them directly linked, instead of attachments, to get them to appear for some people reading IotD via RSS feed and the like.

I play paintball often, and I am all to familiar with incidents like this one: n00b throws smoke grenade, woods catch on fire. The staff did put one out by shooting it with the paintball guns; I guess the CO2 smothered the fire. I hope the guys get better, as it would suck to have only one eye.
P.S. Where do you play paintball?

Looks like the eye is OK for now, he's been released. We play in Hell. :D

Hell, Michigan. The field is called Hell Survivors. Beest also plays big games in Indiana near South Bend.

This reminds me to recycle some beer cans. Why? Here's a longish explanation... :)

In finland we have a rather effective system for recycling practically every drink container you can buy, be it a soda can, a beer bottle or a rare liquor bottle. When you buy any of those, you pay a small "pawn" for the container. Around 0.1-0.2 euro per item depending on the container. When you return the bottle/can to a shop, you get a receipt from the machine you insert them to, and with that you get your money back. The system works well, since about 97-98% of every purchased packages are returned and recycled.

And.. As you (should) know, Finland is a rather small country considering it's population. Around 5 300 000 citizens atm. So every "large" city does not have enough funds to support the expensive rescue choppers by tax income. Kuopio, the town which I live in, has about 93 000 citizens. The rescue chopper service in this region (http://www.ilmarihems.fi/index.php) has been for a while doing rather badly financially, i guess, so the public has been given a choice to donate the money they get from recycling the bottles/cans to the rescue chopper company. so that's why. I buy beer to support a rescue chopper. :beer: :D

I don't know if there's any recycling system as effective as ours in use anywhere in US. Or any other country, for that matter. I really hope there is.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong. I remember reading from a "State of The World" -book (don't know which year that was) that so much aluminum in soda/beer cans is wasted globally each year, that all of the world's aeroplanes could be remade 1.5 times. Every year. That's a LOT of beer and soda cans....

Nice...make the drunks pay for their own emergency transportation from the scene of the alcohol-involved crashes. :D

Certainly not in this country, where all recycling is voluntary. But we're getting better. Our home (kerbside) collection in Greenwich takes just about everything and it is sorted for us.

There is a 10c deposit on all cans and bottle in Michigan. Still many people throw them away. And we have weekly recyclable pick-up too. But people throw them away. Makes me mad/sad....grrrr....

It's a snobbery thing for some. Winos collect the cans off the street and recycle them to get the $. Occassionally sports teams etc will do bottle drives. Teenagers recycle their families waste for gas money. Only poor people return cans/bottles. I realised this when the swim team was doing a bottle drive and people whould help pick them up but refused to look like a vagrant by standing there feeding them into the machine. Or wanted extra credit for being brave and doing it. :rolleyes:

I cannot for the life of me understand why people can't be bothered to separate recyclables from trash, though. Containers are provided, pick-up is on the same day....... Again i think it's a "snobbery"/privacy thing. People want their trash to look neat and tidy while it's on the curb, and they don't want the neighbors to know what they've been drinking. (Recycling totes are open)

I'm from Maine, and I remember in the 70's when Maine instituted a 5 cent deposit on the cans and 10 cents on the bottles. Back then, 5 cents was enough money that people would save up their cans and return them to the store the next time they went shopping. Now, with inflation, 5 cents is really not enough of an incentive. They need to up it to 25 cents per can if they are going to do it at all.

Here in Arlington, everyone has recycling bins, and it seems everyone uses them. It's easy.