HALO Air Ambulance’s “Flight Up the Night – A charity gathering” is the organization’s first official event in the Lethbridge area Mar. 23.
HALO is southern Alberta’s Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS) program. Partnering with regional and provincial stakeholders, HALO responds to a variety of calls for services, including emergency medical scene calls, critical care inter-facility patient transfers, search and rescue, fire rescue, law enforcement incidents and disaster responses.
“We’ve had a lot of different groups support us and do their own fundraising – company golf tournaments and individuals. This is the first time HALO has planned and executed an event. We are excited about being in Lethbridge and showcasing the helicopter is able to serve that part of southern Alberta and we do travel there semi-regularly,” says CEO Paul Carolan. “It represents, not only an opportunity to tell our story, but hopefully to generate some funds for the program. We are hopeful it will be an annual thing.”
The availability of the helicopter, strategically based in Medicine Hat, improves the response time to critically ill and injured patients in remote and inaccessible areas and increases capacity for delivering qualitative medical care and rescue services.
Even though the program has been flying missions since 2007, Carolan says, it’s really been since 2018 a real capacity to serve into the Lethbridge and Lethbridge County areas and beyond took flight.
“Since 2018, we’ve been flying a helicopter capable of serving the entire southern part of the province and we’ve flown numerous missions into and beyond Lethbridge,” adds Carolan. “In fact, it wasn’t shortly after we had the new aircraft, we flew almost to the B.C. border on a mission for a gentleman who had a bad accident while organizing some cattle out by the Porcupine Hills.”
According to Carolan, the organization is in the process of finalizing a long-term funding arrangement with Alberta Health Services. “It will represent a little bit less than 50 per cent based on our current budget. Having them on board is very critical.”
“We will always need corporate support and those individuals and event-type things, counties, municipalities, businesses, foundations and community groups. All the people who have made HALO possible.”
Carolan says HALO loves being connected to the community, and “wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“While we are very grateful for the provincial support, we love we’re still connected to the local community.”
HALO will be on location this week at the Southern Alberta Home, Garden and Leisure Show.
For more information about the fundraising event this month visit haloairambulance.com.
