Quote Originally Posted by FrugalCorner View Post
My opinion -for what it is worth...

1 air space was not really crowded in that the copters had a large seperation between them... there were some very open areas that a copter could have come down on to take a person or two. If a pilot can not get his copter down on a large open area I am not sure he should even be in the air..I am not sure if they even have two way or the means to have two way communication with the police or first reponders

Of course I look at this from the view of spending many years as a Combat Medic.

It has always bothered me to see folks tanking pictures of people in a life or death situation when they could be helping out
It would be even more frustrating for the trained and equipped med-evac pilots to have their landing and air space full of amature rescuers. Did the news pilots have the training and ability to coordinate their efforts to that they wouldn't be in each others way? We've seen news choppers crash during a simple car chase just a few days ago, and they weren't attempting anything more complicated than following a car from a distance.

Would they have the medical training to evaluate whether and how to move victims without causing them further injury? Did they have the ability to know which hospital were equipped and prepared to receive the victims? Besides being unprepared, amature rescuers often become victims themselves, further complicating things for the pros.

I was Editor-In-Chief of the school's newspaper for two semesters when I was in college (winning six local journalism awards), I have Search and Rescue training, and I'm an EMT.

Even with the training I have, if I was on the scene of the collapse as a reporter, I would do that job and only that job to the best of my abilities, answering the "Who", "What", "When", "Where", and most importantly, "Why" questions to inform people and hopefully prevent another such tradgedy.