Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Fisheries and Oceans
Issue No. 15 - Evidence - May 11, 2017
OTTAWA, Thursday, May 11, 2017
The Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans met this day at 8:36 a.m. to study on Maritime Search and Rescue activities, including current challenges and opportunities.
Senator Fabian Manning (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: I am Fabian Manning, a senator from Newfoundland and Labrador. I'm Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.
Before I give the floor to our witnesses this morning, I will invite the committee members to introduce themselves.
Senator Gold: Marc Gold, Quebec.
[Translation]
Senator Forest: Senator Éric Forest from the Gulf region of Quebec.
[English]
Senator McIntyre: Paul McIntyre, New Brunswick.
Senator Sinclair: Murray Sinclair, Manitoba.
Senator Enverga: Tobias Enverga, Ontario. Good morning.
Senator Pate: Kim Pate, Ontario.
The Chair: We may have more senators joining us as the morning progresses. If anybody would like to ask questions to our witness after he makes his comments, feel free.
The committee is continuing its study this morning on maritime search and rescue activities, including the current challenges and opportunities that we face. This morning we are pleased to welcome the Honourable Robert Wells, Q.C.
On behalf of the committee, I thank you for being here today. I understand you have opening remarks which the committee members will follow up with questions. The floor is yours, sir.
The Honourable Robert Wells, Q.C., as an individual: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for having me here. What I propose to do is chat with you for a few minutes about the setup. I should warn you that I will only be speaking about Newfoundland because it would be presumptuous of me to talk about the needs in Ontario or British Columbia or any other province. But I am familiar with the setup, if I may describe it that way, in Newfoundland and what I feel the needs might be.
For those who are not familiar with it, there are three aspects really of search and rescue.
One is the Government of Canada, the Armed Forces, which deals with aeronautical accidents — for example, crashes wherever they might occur within the area that they serve — but they don't deal with provincial searches and rescues on land unless they are asked to and are able to do it, bearing in mind their resources, assets they call them, which are really helicopters and rescue crews. So that's one aspect of it.
Then there is the oil company aspect of it with which I am most familiar because I did the public inquiry into offshore helicopter safety, and that was lacking in some respects, although it didn't affect the accident that occurred in 2009. That was a crash. That wasn't a ditching. Only one person survived, but by the time he was rescued, he was very close to death. He has recovered.
The other aspect is the provincial area, which deals with searches and rescues on land. In my opinion, that's where the gap lies because the province hasn't the financial resources to set up what the federal government has set up vis-à- vis search and rescue, or what the oil companies have set up for search and rescue in their area and on their routes. The province deals with medevac situations, but it also calls on others at times to help. It calls on private resources to help, but it hasn't got what I would say is the key thing that is necessary in search and rescue and that is the type of helicopter such as the Cormorant or the S-92, which the oil companies have. They are fully-equipped search and rescue helicopters. They are called heavy-lift helicopters. They have all the equipment that's necessary.
What equipment is necessary? Auto hover is necessary. The computer can hold the helicopter steady with more finesse than human hands can. They also have FLIR, which forward-looking radar. It is activated by heat. If you or I are in the water maybe a couple of miles distant, it is so sensitive that it can pick up the fact that you're out there. The province has nothing like that.
There has been a change. I've been fortunate. I've lived a long time. But the era in which I grew up on the northeast coast of Newfoundland, there were dog teams. People didn't get lost because the dogs always knew the way home. But the machines they use now, they don't have that instinct. The machine goes until it runs out of fuel or breaks down, but it can't get you home. You have to direct yourself home.
Snow machines and ATVs have great ranges. People get on them and they go for 20 or 30 or 40 miles, which I must say I wouldn't do, but they do it. Then if you get lost, the searchers — private helicopters, people on foot, or the RCMP in their helicopters, which are not search and rescue helicopters — they're all searching, but they are never quite sure where to search because these people don't file a flight plan as an aircraft does. God only knows where they are.
I will tell you an interesting story, which is true, told to me by one of the pilots of the Cormorants. There was a search going on in Grand Falls for someone who had gone off on an ATV. No one knew where he was. He was by himself and they were searching the local area. The Cormorant landed. The pilot, who was very experienced in the RCAF, the military, felt that he and his crew were needed, so he got in touch with the centre in Halifax and they gave him permission.
Well, they searched. They found the individual who had been out one or two nights, broken down or out of fuel. They found the person about 20 miles from where the ground search was going on. They picked him up and they brought him back to Grand Falls. He was okay, but another night or two out of doors might have made the difference.
What I'm trying to say is that if you don't have the proper equipment for search and rescue and a properly trained crew, both pilots and SAR techs, you can't perform search and rescue at the highest level. The oil companies have it, the federal military has it, but the province hasn't got it.
I'm sure you've heard a presentation by Cougar. They sent me a copy of their presentation. I have never done any work with Cougar or been involved with Cougar in any way, but I know them because they were principal evidence givers in the inquiry I conducted. Cougar is suggesting that they could be mandated by the federal government to be part of search and rescue and a partner of sorts with the military, which is the principal search and rescue agency in the country.
I had that kind of thought in a much more restricted way after the inquiry finished. You may or may not have heard about a young fellow of 13 year-year-old on a Ski-Doo late at night one winter who went out alone on the sea ice, which is an incredibly dangerous thing to do. He didn't come back. He obviously got lost or something happened. This was off the coast of Labrador.
The military had two Griffon helicopters, which are pretty good for search and rescue but not in the class of the Cormorant or the S-92, but both of these machines were inoperable and down for repairs. They asked Halifax Search and Rescue if a Cormorant could come up. The Cormorant has a range of about 600 miles. It could get up there, but it would take two to three hours.
For example, the nearest installation off Newfoundland is 315 kilometres. It takes an S-92 an hour and a half to cover that distance, so helicopters are not as fast as a jet or even a piston engine plane. So it would two or three hours. There is a getting-ready time of about half an hour.
The admiral who was in charge that evening said — and I was aware of this through the media — he only had one helicopter at his disposal that night. If he sent that helicopter to Labrador, then there would be nothing else at his disposal in the heavily populated area between Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and the American border to deal with anything that might come up on the ocean or some sort of a crash or something of that order. I would hate to have been in his position because it was a very hard decision. He elected not to send a Cormorant up. The body of the young man was found two to three days later by local searchers in smaller helicopters that were not really equipped, but they found him.
It occurred to me that if there was an arrangement with the military, in a case like that — and this was after the inquiry was over and long before Cougar made any suggestions as to how it might be involved. I should explain that the search and rescue helicopter of Cougar can't leave the offshore. That's its primary responsibility. But now, for instance, Cougar has a total of seven helicopters in St. John's, S-92s. One of these is dedicated for search and rescue to the offshore, but other helicopters, if they were taken out of service, can be reconfigured for search and rescue in an hour. In fact, the one that did the search and rescue before they had a dedicated helicopter when we had our accident in 2009 was reconfigured and sent out in 50 minutes.
So it occurred to me perhaps there could be some arrangement with the military whereby in the case that the admiral found himself in that evening, he could have called Cougar and said, "Can you take a helicopter out of service to cover for us, and if you can do that in an hour, then we could send our helicopter up to Labrador?'' I had never envisaged the detailed and comprehensive thing that Cougar suggested. I won't comment on that because I haven't got the depth of knowledge to know if that would work because they're talking about the whole country, I think. But if something simple, such as I had in mind, of Cougar being contracted to cover for the military, which they could do within the hour by reconfiguring one of their machines, that would free up the military to some degree.
The Cormorant is a very effective search and rescue machine. In fact, I'm told it's probably the best. It has a range of 600 miles. It has three engines. It's excellent, but of course, our Cormorants are in mid-life. They're 15 or 16 years old and are due for a mid-life upgrade. I wish humans could have such an upgrade, but they can't. But you can do it with helicopters.
Very often one hears that the helicopters are down, like the two Griffons in Goose Bay the night the boy went out on the sea ice, and that happens. I think there is going to be an upgrade of the Cormorants. But if you are, as it were, flying on one wing, with machines down and inoperable — these helicopters are incredibly complex. One hour in the air requires three to four hours of maintenance, which gives you an idea of the complexity of the machines. I marvel at the big jet engines in them — the old term would be the "flywheel'' — running at 6,000 RPM, and the gear box transfers that down to rotors, which are between 150 and 200 RPM. The thing is a miracle of technology, with all sorts of safeguards and warnings built into it. You can't go anywhere at length without having access to the technicians that you need to keep these things running; you can't go too far. I forget what the time is for pilots and aircrew, but it was seven or eight hours. If you're going a long distance like up North, you would have to carry your replacement crew with you because you're only allowed to fly for so long.
So there are a lot of tricky questions involved here. But my thought has always been, since I did the inquiry, that there could be a role in which the military had an agreement, and Cougar is the only company in that area that they could have an agreement with, to cover for them when they were in need of extra machines when their machines were down or otherwise occupied.
As far as the North is concerned, I read in the press that there's a Canadian moratorium on exploration in the Arctic. I think that's a good thing. We are really not ready to have search and rescue in the Arctic. It takes so long to get up there in helicopters, and one of the things with search and rescue that I learned is that speed of getting on the scene is absolutely vital. The one survivor in our crash was on the verge of death when he was found, and he had been in the water about an hour and a half, maybe a little bit more, when he was spotted by a reconnaissance plane doing surveys of foreign fishing or ice off the coast. If you spot someone in the ocean, you have to stay around and keep an eye on them. You can't say, well, he or she is at such-and-such a place, because if you don't keep watching the person, you can lose them and perhaps for good. So it was an hour and a half to two hours before he was rescued by a reconfigured Cougar helicopter. At that time, all of the Cormorants were in North Sydney on a training exercise, so it took them a couple of hours or more to get to the sea, but by that time the one survivor had been rescued.
So speed to get to the scene of an emergency is absolutely essential in my view. That's why I believe if we're going to go into the North — and there has been cooperation between the five or six countries that have access to the North. The busiest one is Russia. It's setting up, according to what I read in The Economist, various search and rescue operations along its area of coastline, but we have nothing like that in the Arctic. So it's a good thing that we have this moratorium on drilling for oil for a three-year period. Because if we're going to go into the North, we have to have installations up there that can house and maintain helicopters and crews to be on the scene of an accident in a hurry.
I was invited to a conference about three years ago and various people were talking about it. I remember one gentleman who said, "Oh, yes, the helicopters can get up there.'' I said, "For every one hour in the air, they need three or four hours of maintenance.'' "Oh, no,'' he said, "it's good for them to have these long runs.'' It may be good for a car sometimes to have a long run, but these helicopters need much more backup than anything else I can think of in terms of maintenance.
So there we are; we have very little presence in the North. Yes, the Coast Guard can get up North, but it takes a ship two, three days or four days to get there, depending on the distance involved. As one Coast Guard captain said to me, "In terms of air crashes or losses of people, unless we're right on the scene or very close to it, it's going to take us too long to get there. It takes us an hour to get a ship, even that's ready, to leave port. It may take us four or five hours to get where we're going. The emergency is over either by air rescue or people not surviving before we can get there.'' So you come back always to these specialized helicopters, provided they can get to the scene quickly enough to be of use to people who are in dire straits.
One other point I'd like to make is that not only do you have to be close to the scene, but you have to have people there who can deal with the problem. To me, when I think of search and rescue, that is fundamental.
I will finish with an amusing story, but it was not amusing to me, necessarily, at the time.
When I did this commission of inquiry, I decided I wanted to go offshore and experience that. They said to me, "Well, you can't go offshore unless you do the training.'' What does the training involve? Well, it involves a couple of days, and you have to sit underwater, get used to being underwater with a breathing apparatus. You have to go in what I called an "infernal machine,'' but they didn't. It's a mock-up helicopter that drops into the pool and promptly overturns because all the weight is on top, the engines and the rotors.
Was I apprehensive? Yes, but damn it, I thought, I'm going to do this. I did, but the helicopter filled with water so quickly that I didn't get a breath. I won't tell you what I couldn't say because my mouth was in the water, but I won't repeat what I said in my mind when I found myself in that situation. Then the helicopter sedately turned over. By this time, my lungs with bursting, but I had knocked out the window as directed in the training, crawled out through the window and finally came up.
Was it a good experience? It was interesting, put it that way. When I got home that evening, I was so exhausted, my wife said, "You're not going back there tomorrow.'' I said, "I have to go back.'' Anyway, I went back and survived the training and took the trip.
The trip was valuable because it occurred to me, looking down from my seat in the transport helicopter, that if the seas are too rough, if you go down there, you're not likely to survive because you're going to be in serious danger, the crew and the passengers, but also the rescuers.
These helicopters can fly in high winds, and when I looked down and saw the ocean in the state I knew it was, I said to myself, "If we go down there, we are in trouble and the rescuer is in trouble,'' and I dealt with that in my report.
I was quite intrigued to know three years later, I think it was, there was some ditching and crashing, two or three, in the North Sea. They asked for a public inquiry — a royal commission they used to be called — into what was going wrong, and the U.K. government did not have a public inquiry. Somebody said, "But the Canadians did an inquiry; that's the only one.'' They went to my report and made some changes vis-à-vis in what sea states offshore helicopters could fly in the North Sea, because beyond a certain sea state, rescue becomes problematic and dangerous for the rescuers.
I know I've gone on too long, but thank you for listening.
The Chair: Your wealth of experience is something that we have waited for and to hear you put forward your concerns.
Senator Gold: Good morning, sir. Thank you for being here. It's a pleasure to have you and your experience benefit our work.
I want to return to the question of the resources that are available for search and rescue. I know you modestly said you didn't want to comment too much on the Cougar proposal, and I won't press you on that, except to ask you the following. Though it appears that the federal side has more resources than the province does, we've heard evidence that the resources are not necessarily adequate, certainly not for the North, as you pointed out, but even elsewhere.
Given the age of the fleet, would there not be a role for the private sector to do even more than simply spell the military, if the military has only one bird that can fly? Because if we understand correctly, their fleet is newer and more extensive than the federal fleet. Without getting into the details of what the arrangement might be, would that generally enhance our capacity to be effective in search and rescue?
Mr. Wells: I really think, especially if we are going to do anything in the North, we need more resources or assets, which are helicopters and crews — yes, absolutely.
Also, people are doing things today that place themselves in danger, sometimes very recklessly, but still they are in danger, and there is an obligation to rescue them if that can be done.
The fleet is aging. If they were all new aircraft, it might be able to handle its responsibilities adequately. But when you have downtime for repairs such as the two Griffons in Goose Bay, when the boy went out on the sea ice, neither was operable. If they had been operable, it could have made a difference.
Search and rescue is expensive. Let's say the Cormorant is probably the best vehicle, but a fully equipped Cormorant costs about $50 million, give or take. A fully equipped S-92 would cost about $30 million. That's beyond the resources of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador at the moment because you also have to house these helicopters, have a full maintenance crew and a full SAR tech crew, as well as the pilots.
I suppose you have all heard of the financial constraints now on the part of the government in Newfoundland and Labrador, and I really doubt that the province can afford to get into that. It's a provincial responsibility for what is on the land, but I can't see how they can afford that sort of fleet, and I guess they've never been able to afford it or it was never considered to be a priority.
I think with people ranging on snow machines and ATVs all over the countryside, it has become even more onerous. People take shortcuts across lakes that they shouldn't be on because the ice is melting, shortcuts across the sea ice. As a judge, I've dealt with the estate of a husband and wife who went to a function on a snowmobile across sea ice, down in open water at night, not surviving. It's a whole tricky business of people and their use of devices and the call for searches and rescues that falls not just within the federal ambit but the provincial ambit also.
More resources, yes.
Senator Gold: Thank you.
Senator McIntyre: Thank you, Mr. Wells, for your presentation. There is no question that over the years the province of Newfoundland and Labrador has endured its share of tragic events.
I understand that the commission of inquiry made 33 recommendations. The main recommendation was the establishment of a dedicated first-response helicopter, and I understand that this recommendation was acted upon.
Mr. Wells: It was.
Senator McIntyre: How many other recommendations were acted upon and which ones were not acted upon? Is there an explanation for this?
Mr. Wells: Yes, I can give you the explanation.
The dedicated helicopter was so important to me that midway through the inquiry I felt they needed to get working on this. I was going to make a recommendation at the end, but I was also allowed to make interim recommendations if I felt it was so important that I should do so. Once I realized that there was no dedicated helicopter and if something went wrong, as did go wrong in March of 2009, you had to take a helicopter out of the fleet, reconfigure it from a passenger helicopter to a search and rescue helicopter, I thought this shouldn't be. In the North Sea, they have all sorts of resources from several countries. We'll never have as many resources as they have, but I considered that so important that I made an interim recommendation.
A huge snowstorm started after I went home on a Friday evening. Saturday, Sunday and Monday we couldn't move. I walked around the house like someone possessed because I knew that I had to write a letter of recommendation. Tuesday morning I got in the office at seven and my letter was ready. The first typist that appeared, I said, "Sit down. Don't answer the phone. Type this letter.'' I delivered it by hand to the CNLOPB, the regulator, by 10 o'clock in the morning. All was quiet for the rest of the morning, but in the afternoon the phones started ringing. "Are you suggesting we stop the offshore while we get what you have now recommended?'' I said, "No, I'm not, but it's important that you get to work on this right away.''
There were 29 actual recommendations. This one was worked on. It took two years to get the dedicated helicopter, the dedicated building for it and the dedicated crews. Now they have what is like a very small but nice hotel in which the crews that are on duty stay and sleep and eat, and they are ready. We now have a 15- to 20-minute time to get in the air, "wheels up,'' as they say. So they've done their part.
They have recommended so many other things, 28 of the 29. Now comes the rub: I also recommended, like Norway and the U.K. and Australia, that we have a separate safety authority and not have it done as a branch of the regulator, the CNLOPB.
Well, the CNLOPB had no power to do that recommendation so it submitted it, I presume, to the federal authorities as a recommendation. That recommendation to date has not been acted upon.
The only public comment I heard was from a minister in the previous administration who was asked about it. His comment was another level of bureaucracy. Well, it depends on what one feels and thinks about these things. I felt it was important.
Interestingly enough, after Deepwater Horizon, the Americans set up a commission of inquiry. Instead of the three, four or five people that I had — because I got their report — there were more than 100. They recommended the same sort of thing. I think there was resistance there also. I talked to both of the co-chairs. One was Senator Graham and the other was a man named Mr. Reilly. They met resistance on that. Some people just feel that the regulator of all things in the offshore can equally regulate safety.
The CNLOPB now has a good safety system in place. They had no aeronautical expertise at all. But now they have a former officer in the Canadian Forces who was in charge of safety vis-à-vis helicopters and flights, so they have improved the safety no end and they deserve credit for that. But, a separate safety authority, no, that has not been set up.
Senator Enverga: Thank you for being here today. We are listening to your wisdom and knowledge about this search and rescue business.
We have been to the Maritimes and have talked to a lot of Canadian Coast Guard Auxiliary, the private individuals who have been helping. I have learned that 40 per cent of all maritime search and rescue operations were done by these auxiliary groups. Could there be legal implications by using the auxiliary more often than anything else?
Mr. Wells: I'm not sure that I got the question.
Senator Enverga: It's about the auxiliary Coast Guard.
Mr. Wells: The ground search people.
Senator Enverga: We have been to the Maritimes and talked to a lot of Canadian Coast Guard Auxiliary, or CCGA. We talked to them during our investigation in the summer and were told 40 per cent of the rescues were done by the auxiliary groups. In your opinion, are there legal implications for using these auxiliary groups to help us?
Mr. Wells: I know that there are auxiliaries like the Rovers, which I think is a branch of Scouting Canada. I happen to know some of the people in Newfoundland and Labrador, especially in the St. John's area and the larger centres, who do tremendous work. The RCMP can be called upon; the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary can be called upon.
I would agree that on land the vast majority of rescues are done by these auxiliaries who do great work. Most of them are volunteers who are just interested in that sort of work.
They do excellent work when they know approximately — let's say someone disappears. I remember one incident where a car disappeared over a high cliff. The driver and his two children disappeared as well, but nobody knew. They found the car at the bottom of the cliff but they never, ever found the bodies, to my knowledge, of the man and his two children. But there, the search was in a localized area. A helicopter wouldn't have been of much advantage. It was with boots on the land.
So they do tremendous work when the area is well-known and localized and they can get to it, but it is in the wilderness areas of the province or of Labrador, for example, that these local auxiliaries haven't the equipment or perhaps the knowledge. This business of searching from a search and rescue helicopter, these are highly trained people, and that kind of searching is very difficult, if not impossible, for these local people to do.
But you are quite right, the majority of incidents are close to built-up areas or towns or villages, settlements and outports. And yes, they do tremendous work.
Senator Enverga: Do you see any legal implications to using them quite often?
Mr. Wells: That sort of thing I know worries Cougar, when it has been called upon. When somebody's life is in danger, you are not going to hem and haw; you are going to go. They wonder, if something goes wrong, where their insurance will stand and what liability might they attract.
To my knowledge, there has never been litigation arising out of this, but I suspect there could be. I know from Cougar's submission, and they sent me a copy, that they are concerned about that.
[Translation]
Senator Forest: Thank you for your presentation. My colleague, Senator Gold, asked the question I wanted to ask you, about the contribution from the private sector.
[English]
Senator Sinclair: Now that I have had a chance to hear the questions other senators have asked, one question remains, sir. Might you comment on the issue of the work in other countries that you had a chance to see? I understand as part of your commission of inquiry that you travelled to the United Kingdom and Norway. Did you go to Australia as well?
Mr. Wells: Yes, I went there to make a speech about it all, but by then I think my report was out.
Senator Sinclair: Because the committee is planning on travelling to those jurisdictions. There are certain things about the operations there that you have had an opportunity to observe. Could you share with the committee the kind of things that this committee could further examine, over and above what you have reported upon, in terms of your travel to those countries?
Mr. Wells: The North Sea, I think, is the most comparable to our offshore. The northern North Sea can be a very rough ocean, but in most respects it's not as violent as the west coast of the Atlantic, which is off Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.
In the morning, it's quite a sight from Aberdeen, for instance, where you have 35 or 40 helicopters taking off to the various installations. Yes, I've gone through their search and rescue aircraft. They are not as commodious. They use a Super Puma. That's the one I went through. You have to be careful you don't bump your head when you are crawling around.
A lot of work is done with simulators, and I think here it is now the same thing. It's much less expensive to train with simulators.
But the North Sea is very comparable. What might be very valuable to you, as it was to me, is the opinions both of the operators — the pilots, the aircrew, the search and rescue people — and the regulators. I found all of their comments very helpful in understanding more about search and rescue.
Search and rescue, up until that time in Canada and certainly for the oil industry, was confined to Newfoundland and Labrador and one helicopter in Nova Scotia, and the helicopters weren't dedicated. Now, of course, it's much more sophisticated.
Australia is rather a different kettle of fish in some respects. I gather, from talking to people who served in search and rescue in Australia, it's a different thing. They don't have to deal with such a wild ocean off the northern coast of Australia where the oil installations are required. They don't have to have all the protective clothing that we have to have because our temperatures offshore in Newfoundland and Labrador even in summer are only two degrees or three degrees. They might be slightly higher at the very surface, but as you go down, and you don't have to go very far, they are very cold. At times like this, for instance, the temperatures of the water off Newfoundland and Labrador are less than one degree and might be zero. This has been an extraordinary year for icebergs and sea ice.
So you would benefit and learn a lot. The things they are worried about in Australia are the same sort of things, getting to people quickly. Off the northern coast of Australia, I think it would be very wise to have a shark repellant on your person. I certainly wouldn't want to go down there and be in the ocean. The ocean might be quite warm, but there are other dangers lurking.
Yes, you would benefit from the North Sea and you would benefit from Australia, too, although I know the North Sea people better. Their conditions, especially in the northern part, are more proximate to ours. But yes, you would benefit. There is no question about that.
Senator Sinclair: Thank you, sir.
The Chair: I know a major issue brought up during your inquiry and since then has to do with night flights. We know that the companies push the envelope on this for the simple reason of organization and scheduling. It is still an issue. Would you like to elaborate on some of your thoughts on night flights?
Mr. Wells: During the course of the inquiry, it became pretty clear to me that it would be much more difficult to effect a rescue at night if the helicopter went down in either a ditching or a crash than it would in the day. Now at that time our helicopter, which would be reconfigured, would not have FLIR, the forward-looking heat radar that could pick up a person two or three miles away. It did not have that and it did not have auto-hover. Auto-hover is very important.
When I went on the Cormorant, I must say the military was helpful and they allowed me to go on practice runs both in the day and in the night, and I persuaded them to let me go down on the wire. That was quite an experience also. In any event, they are so skilled.
They also allowed me, at night with a searchlight directed on a particular spot on the ground — and we're at, say, 100 feet — to lean out the doorway and operate a little toggle switch to keep the aircraft over the spot where it's supposed to be. The pilots surrender that degree of control to the SAR techs. I can tell you that's difficult, but they're very skilled at it.
The Chair: Thank you.
Mr. Wells: To come back to night flights, I'm sorry; I digressed.
I was concerned about night flights, especially with the lack of auto-hover and the lack of FLIR. I recommended, at least until these things were acquired, that the CNLOPB be very careful about authorizing night flights. They disallowed night flights.
I understand now that the oil companies — and the CNLOPB knows about this — will take off, for instance, from St. John's, where all the facilities are, in the dark as long as they land on the rigs offshore in daylight. So they'll fly toward the sun, and in reverse, they will leave the oil rigs on occasion when it is still night, where it might be more dangerous in taking off, but they arrive in St. John's when it's pretty well dark, or dark. I believe this is what happens now.
They have various arguments over night flying. Apparently night flying is an advanced skill. You have to train for it, and you have to be familiar with it or you'll get rusty. So they train for night flying. I think the pilots themselves would like to do more night flying to keep their skills good and up to par in that direction.
The degree of night flying, as I understand it now, is no takeoffs or landing in the dark, but at the end of the flight, depending which way you're going, in St. John's you might either take off in the dark and fly toward the sun or vice versa.
That's where it is now.
A helicopter can fly just as well in the dark as it can in the light, but if something goes wrong, I still believe it would be more difficult for the rescuers and the people in the water, should they survive the initial crash, or the ditching or overturning, especially in any kind of rough water. It would be more difficult. There are various opinions on that, but I still think it would be more difficult, but probably not as difficult in a calm sea as it would be either in daylight or dark in a rough sea with waves of 15 or 20 metres and high winds.
I don't know if any of you have tried to dock a sailboat in a high wind or any kind of boat. It is difficult. And if you're trying to get your safety equipment out of an overturned helicopter — a raft and all that sort of thing — in high winds and heavy seas, it is almost impossible. In these waters, your hands become useless in a matter of minutes. The survivor told us that. He thought he was in about 20 or 30 feet of water when he came to and saw way up through. By the time he got to the surface — and he was a young and very fit man — his hands were absolutely useless. He couldn't get on the gloves which were part of his suit. He just couldn't do it. His hands were useless.
All these factors enter into our offshore: the cold, the cold water, the wind, the storms. The conditions you're flying in and over are very important. Rather than fly in conditions such as I've described, if I were on an offshore platform and the sea were like a mill pond, I might elect to go at night if I had a choice rather than in stormy conditions. It's a very iffy proposition, isn't it?
Senator Enverga: There were 33 recommendations. Was a personal beacon part of the recommendation?
Mr. Wells: They have them anyway. The suits they were using when our crash occurred had beacons, but I made recommendations about that. There were new suits and then an even newer generation of suits since the ones that followed the inquiry. They have done their best to make the suits as good as possible. I am quite confident now that our suits are as good as you can get.
Senator Enverga: How about regular people who are on the ocean, the public?
Mr. Wells: The suits that the fishermen use are different than those the helicopter passengers wear. There is greater flotation in the suits fishermen don when an emergency arises than those for passengers who are in the water.
You can't use these kinds of suits in a helicopter, because when the helicopter turns over, if you're wearing a high flotation suit, you won't be able to stay down in the water and get out through the window, which is now upside down. You float up to the bottom of the helicopter and may not be able to get out, so you have a different flotation capacity in the suit than the helicopter passengers have.
Senator Enverga: What about the fishermen? Same thing?
Mr. Wells: Yes, the fishermen have these high flotation suits, and they can float better than the helicopter suit. They are more buoyant.
One of the issues that bothers people is the auxiliary tanks. When you're going to be near the Continental Shelf, you're getting near the 500-mile capacity of the S-92. When I came back, it was on a helicopter that landed to pick me and one other person up on Hibernia. All the window seats were taken.
When the passengers get on board, there is a big rush and I wondered why everyone was rushing? I was just walking normally. They're rushing to get the window seats, because that's where you get out through. If you're sitting next to such a person, you have to wait until they get out before you can get out.
Coming back, I was on an inside seat and opposite me was an auxiliary tank. I kept wondering, "If we go down, I'll be crawling under the tank won't I, to get out?'' It was conundrum, which I fortunately didn't have to face.
I could see the controls and the gauges of the helicopter from where I was sitting. One of the passengers on the flight with me came to me afterward after and said, "I saw you were watching the radar all the way,'' and I was glad to see the cliffs come up on the radar.
But there are all sorts of difficulties that one doesn't normally think about in the offshore.
We did a survey of offshore passengers. We found that there wasn't terror, but there was always a degree of anxiety in the passengers. People who have served offshore for as long as eight or ten years have said to me, "I have been fortunate. I haven't had an incident. But now is the time for me to quit while I'm ahead,'' and they quit.
Senator McInnis: My sincere apologies for not being here on time. I was engaged in another meeting. I really wanted to hear what you had to say. You may well have already answered the questions I have.
Generally when a commission of inquiry is conducted and recommendations are presented to government, governments endorse them holus-bolus; they accept them. I take it they have implemented them all, have they?
Mr. Wells: CNLOPB had the power, I suppose with the acquiescence of government — to do what they did. Of the 29 recommendations, they have done 28. The twenty-ninth was one for government. The Province of Newfoundland endorsed all 29 recommendations, but the federal authorities have not endorsed — as yet, anyway — the twenty-ninth recommendation, which is a separate safety authority, unconnected with the regulator of production and that sort of thing: safety on the rigs, safety in the air, safety in all respects.
What apparently can happen — and I was told this by regulators in the North Sea, where they have a separate safety authority — is that sometimes people working together, as the safety people work with the people on the rigs, can become too friendly or too close. In fact, the head of the regulatory authority in the U.K. North Sea told me, "We move our people about so they can't establish close friendships with the people they're dealing with every day.'' I think some of that thinking was behind the U.K. and Norway in getting into a separate regulator. But so far, there has been no movement on that particular recommendation.
The interesting thing is that no one from the authorities, as it were, has ever asked to talk to me about my reasoning or anything about the reports. Of course they have the report and I'm sure they've read it — I have no doubt — but I've never been asked, aside from organizations such as this, to explain my thinking on any particular topic.
Senator McInnis: Were you the only commissioner?
Mr. Wells: Yes, I was the only commissioner and I wrote the report. After hearing it all, the second spring, in the second year, we were ready. I said to my two counsel, "I don't want to see you in the summer. I'm going to write the report.'' I sat every day and wrote the report.
In September, when they came back, as I asked them to do, I said, "Look, your role now is to argue with me on every item in this report in case I've got something that, in your view, is wrong.'' We argued for about two months. Sometimes I paid attention to what was said; in other cases, I said, "No way.'' In any case, it was my report from start to finish. I wrote it, signed it, sent it out and hoped for the best.
Senator McInnis: Was your mandate such that you were dealing specifically with the circumstances surrounding this particular disaster, or was it search and rescue in similar situations that could happen, or search and rescue, period?
Mr. Wells: Here's the thing. The Transportation Safety Board had to determine — and I worked closely with them — why the crash occurred. That wasn't my role. My role was to examine safety issues. But after the Transportation Safety Board had reported, I was given the authority to comment on it.
Some of their recommendations dovetailed with some of mine, but mine were more extensive because they went into suits and night flying and all the things that the Transportation Safety Board didn't have any authority or didn't wish to enter into. They were focused on the crash.
Of course, I suppose everyone here knows — but I'll mention it in case you don't — that the crash occurred because on the oil reservoir in the S-92, which was newly in service — now, the reason it's called S-92, Sikorsky, is that development began in 1992. However, it didn't get into service because the development of a highly technical helicopter takes nine or ten years.
When it was developed, the FAA found two things in the testing. They weren't tested by the Canadian Department of Transport because there is a legislated agreement between the European equivalent of the Department of Transport, the Department of Transport, and the FAA in the U.S. that they will accept each other's certifications. So the S-92, being an American machine, was certified by the FAA, and the certification was accepted by the Europeans and by Transport Canada.
What happened was that it didn't have the run-dry capability of half an hour that previous helicopters like the S-61. It only had the run-dry capacity of 11 minutes.
The oil reservoir had three little bolts. I've held three of them in my hand, hardly as thick as a pencil. Apparently, the vibration of the helicopter fractured the bolts.
The bolts first failed in Australia off a place called Broome. The helicopter was only six or seven minutes away from land. It hurried toward the land and landed without incident, but one of the bolts had fractured. Sikorsky treated it as a maintenance issue because one of the bolts in the field had been replaced. For the next six months, maintenance was the issue. This was all found by the Transportation Safety Board.
It wasn't until later that new S-92s were fitted with steel bolts. The ones with the titanium bolts, which is a very hard substance but more possibly able to fracture, they didn't order them replaced immediately.
Let's say the incident in Australia occurred in June or July. They started putting in new steel bolts for the three bolts in, let's say, August or September. But they didn't get around to ordering for all of the existing fleet — which numbered about 80, I think, worldwide — until January. In January, they said, "You must replace all these titanium bolts with steel bolts.'' And this is what made me upset: "You have a year to do it, or 1,250 hours.'' And 1,250 hours is about what an offshore helicopter flies in a year. That upset me very much, to give them a year, because Cougar ordered the bolts within 15 days of this directive. But the bolts had not arrived in their office until very shortly after the crash, so they didn't have an opportunity to fit the bolts.
Since then, they have redesigned the reservoir, and now the closing top of it is quite different. It has six steel bolts. Steel is more resilient than titanium, and there have been no incidents since involving the bolts and the loss of oil. Once the oil was lost, particularly in the tail rotor, it happened first. The rubbing, the friction, without the presence of oil, just stripped the gears until they were as smooth as one's hand, and the helicopter became uncontrollable and crashed.
The person who escaped came to. He was used to sailing small craft and teaching sailing, and he was used to being in the water. He was young and fit, 28 or 29, I think. He escaped not through a window or a door but from a great gash in the fuselage of the helicopter. He just went right up through.
There was one other person who got up through, and she was a passenger, a young woman who was involved in the catering business offshore. She got up. She must have undone her belt as well. He saw her when he was on the surface. He knew that she had drowned because her face was down in the water, and she, of course, did not survive.
The other passengers of the total of 18 were all belted into their seats when the fuselage of the S-92 was brought to the surface, so they apparently did not regain consciousness, nor were they able to disengage their safety belts. They were in their seats, belted in.
Senator McInnis: Mechanical failures are one thing. It's a sad to think of, but, inevitably, there probably will be another incident such as this. It's just one of these things. They're so far offshore, and you do everything you can mechanically to make sure that it's fit.
Can I ask you: The Canadian Coast Guard unless they're in the immediate area, probably could do little.
Mr. Wells: That's what the captain told me.
Senator McInnis: I believe that. So what can be done either in the private sector, the oil industry or by government to ease the situation? When I questioned the Cougar helicopter officials over in St. John's, Newfoundland, I said, "This is probably going to happen again.'' He said, "Yes, unfortunately it is,'' and they're doing everything possible.
What could be done by the national government, or any government, to facilitate or ease a future incident?
Mr. Wells: The more installations that are offshore, of course the more opportunity there is for a helicopter that's in difficulties, but still flying or flyable, to land on it. But, of course, if the helicopter is in crash mode or loses control, it would be extremely dangerous to try to land on a rig, even if you could, because it could be catastrophic. So there, the choice would be to ditch.
I don't know what anybody can do in the offshore except to make sure that you have the best suits available, that you have the best search and rescue available, and that you don't fly in weather that is so bad on the ocean, to say nothing of the winds. These helicopters can fly in very high winds, but if the ocean is so turbulent — "sea state'' they call it — that rescue becomes highly dangerous and perhaps impossible, don't fly. At least that's my view of it.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Wells. Certainly, you have given us a wealth of information. Thank you for your time here this morning. We wish you all the best.
Mr. Wells: All I can say is thank you for having me, and I hope that I might have been of some help.
The Chair: We are looking forward to tabling our eventual report.
(The committee adjourned.)