Provider profile: Joint Rescue Coordination Centre Halifax
Oliver Cuenca talks to Major Chris Simm of the Royal Canadian Air Force and Officer-in-Charge of Joint Rescue Coordination Centre Halifax
Canada’s search and rescue (SAR) response is a “system of integrated systems”, began Major Chris Simm, Officer-in-Charge at Joint Rescue Coordination Centre (JRCC) Halifax, with rescue operations across the country’s vast territory being largely overseen by the “umbrella” of Public Safety Canada.
“Within that, we have provincial and territorial jurisdictions of police forces that go and do day-to-day emergency management,” he noted. “But on a federal level, we have two main entities: the Canadian Armed Forces, and the Canadian Coast Guard.”
Simm added that while the Canadian Armed Forces are responsible for managing the entire system, their core responsibilities lie in “the effective coordination of both aeronautical and maritime SAR”.
The Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) – which Simm is affiliated with – is particularly responsible for “aeronautical distress – so that’s anything from an airplane, a helicopter, a hot air balloon, or a Boeing Starliner”, he explained.
By contrast, the Canadian Coast Guard’s jurisdiction is the maritime realm – “specifically the federal waters around Canada”, Simm added. “Smaller rivers, smaller lakes, they’re generally the responsibility of the provincial fire and police services.”
These operations are managed from three Joint Rescue Coordination Centres overseen by the RCAF, located in Halifax, Nova Scotia; Trenton, Ontario; and Victoria, British Columbia. “We each have our own area of responsibility (AOR) that we manage and coordinate our SAR incidents within,” said Simm.
JRCC Halifax, he explained, “encompasses the east coast of Canada, as well as up to Baffin Island in the north, as well as a huge swathe of the Atlantic Ocean. We border Boston (USA) to the south, Greenland to the north, Ponta Delgada (Azores) to the east – we even link up with the UK on the very edge of our border as well.”
Aircraft and equipment
As well as operating the JRCCs, the RCAF contributes a number of dedicated SAR aircraft, in line with the requirements of the Canadian Aeronautical and Maritime Search and Rescue (CAMSAR) Manual.
“In Halifax, we’re fortunate to have two Air Force bases: Canadian Forces Base (CFB) Gander and CFB Greenwood,” said Simm. “Each of those bases has a dedicated, primary [CH-149] Cormorant that’s dedicated to SAR. And they’re on a heightened readiness posture to be able to respond.”
In addition to the two Cormorants, he added that a dedicated C-130 Hercules is also kept on standby to support SAR in his AOR.
“And that’s just Halifax,” Simm continued. “On the west coast (Victoria), they have a Cormorant and a Hercules, and in Trenton they have another Hercules and a [CH-146] Griffon. They’re dedicated to SAR and can’t be used for other purposes.”
The Hercules is a pretty huge aircraft, so it’s packed full of survival equipment for different domains. It has pumps and sea rescue kits onboard that they can drop. They also have different survival bags that they can aerial-drop to people on the ground
Both the fixed-wing and the rotory-wing craft are equipped with a range of equipment to support their operations, said Simm, although the precise types will vary according to the aircraft type.
“The Hercules is a pretty huge aircraft, so it’s packed full of survival equipment for different domains,” he explained. “It has pumps and sea rescue kits onboard that they can drop. They also have different survival bags that they can aerial-drop to people on the ground.
“The Cormorants are a bit more mission-dependent because they’re limited by what they can put onboard because of weight. But they always have the rescue basket and Stokes litter to be able to effectively hoist someone that’s in distress,” he added.
Additionally, depending on the type of mission or patient they are responding to, Cormorant crews may also bring aboard other kit, such as oxygen bottles, pumps, or self-locating datum marker buoys (SLDMBs).
Simm added that while the use of drones is another new capability that “we are taking onboard”, right now most work using them is being done by volunteer organizations such as RCAF’s Civil Air Search and Rescue Association (CASARA).
At present, such uncrewed aircraft are being used for “quite small search areas”, largely focused on missing persons and airplane crashes. “One of the challenges of using drones is getting it to the area of distress,” Simm said, adding that “right now, we’re using small, highly capable drones that have a one- or two-mile line-of-sight use with about a 45-minute battery”.
Missions
Simm explained that because of both the location of JRCC Halifax and Canada’s “massive coastline”, a majority of the cases his coordination center responds to are “maritime-focused”.
“Especially in our Halifax region, you have international shipping lanes coming over from Europe through our area of responsibility down to the eastern seaboard of the USA, or towards the Panama Canal,” he continued. “The fishing industry is very big on the east coast as well. And so we get a lot of calls for marine medevacs – injured sailors, injured workers that need immediate medevac off their vessel and to a hospital.”
We get a lot of calls for marine medevacs – injured sailors, injured workers that need immediate medevac off their vessel and to a hospital
Additionally, JRCC Halifax may be called out to respond to incidents that “normal emergency services can’t get to”, Simm explained. “A lot of Canada is remote and not accessible by road, so any incident that happens there – injured hikers, airplane and helicopter crashes, missing snowmobiles in Arctic Canada – will normally rely on the SAR system to go and help get them.”
He explained that “although our primary mandate is aerial and maritime, we do a lot of support to the provinces because we have the assets and capabilities to be able to get there quickly and get to those remote regions that they can’t”.
The JRCCs will typically experience a spike in missions in the summertime – in what Simm said is referred to as “crazy SAR season”.
“Usually the period between May and September is extremely busy, and I think that’s a natural consequence of the weather being finally nice, winter’s over, and everyone’s doing stuff – they’re hiking, they’re sailing, they’re out on the water – they’re just more active,” he explained. “And more people doing things equals more things that potentially can go wrong.”
This is especially true for JRCC Trenton, he noted, which oversees the Great Lakes as part of its AOR. By contrast, JRCC Halifax’s rate of missions is steadier – driven primarily by the constant flow of maritime traffic and the fishing industry.
However, Simm added that this is being affected by climate change, with a lot more cases now happening during the so-called “shoulder seasons” of spring and autumn. Whereas previously there would be reliably thick sheets of ice on lakes that could be walked or driven on, this ice is now becoming increasingly unreliable – resulting in more people falling through.
“Those snowmobile routes that Aboriginal communities have been using for generations are no longer usable, because the ice is now melting much earlier than it has been. So we’re noticing an increase of cases further north in those months,” he said.
Looking to the future
While Canada’s SAR provisions are already extremely successful, with Simm stating that presently “we’re prosecuting around 9,000 cases annually across the country”, ultimately, he warned, this number “is only going to increase”.
Part of the reason for this increase, alongside factors such as general increases in population over time, is the growing number of incidents in northern Canada as human traffic there grows. This includes cruise ship traffic, tourism, and general industry.
Simm argued that the biggest problem with this increase in northerly traffic is that “all the things we take for granted in southern Canada – such as “assets, resources, police, fire, and medical facilities close by” – are in short supply in that region, necessitating a greater aerial search and rescue response.
In response to these challenges, the RCAF is upgrading its aerial SAR provision. This includes the upcoming mid-life upgrade to the Air Force’s Cormorant fleet, as well as the phasing out of the Hercules in favor of the CASA C-295.
“The Cormorants are an incredible medium-lift helicopter which is phenomenal for the kind of missions we do,” said Simm, noting that they have been in service with the RCAF for over two decades now, with the RCAF now looking to expand its fleet further in the near future.
Really, the next 20 years of SAR are going to be dedicated to using the tech that’s out there
While he recognized that the C-295 is “not the Hercules”, being much smaller, he stated that “it makes up for that with technology – it’s going to be a much more capable aircraft for searching, using new technologies” such as the electro-optical/infrared WESCAM MX-15 camera.
Additionally: “Just this year we’ve started using cell phone detection in our fixed-wing aircraft. We’re working very closely with cell phone companies here in Canada.”
Simm is optimistic about the future of Canadian SAR, concluding: “The technology’s there – and we’re starting to implement it. Really, the next 20 years of SAR are going to be dedicated to using the tech that’s out there.”