St. Peter-Ording/Emden FDP politician Christopher Vogt made use of his stay in the North Frisia region to pay a fact-finding visit to Northern HeliCopter GmbH's offshore air rescue base in St. Peter-Ording. Mr. Vogt, deputy leader of the Free Democratic Party parliamentary group and chairman of the Economic Affairs Committee in the Schleswig-Holstein state parliament, was particularly interested in the holistic rescue concept WINDEAcare.

"With this rescue concept we now serve seven wind farms and six generator platforms in the German Bight, which makes us market leader in this sphere of activity", explained Herbert Janssen, operations manager at Northern HeliCopter GmbH. He went on to say that this year alone has seen 78 missions flown from the base in St. Peter-Ording. The helicopters used are equipped to and beyond the relevant DIN standard, on 24/7 call and crewed by a pilot and co-pilot, a hoist operator, an emergency doctor and a paramedic. Besides rescue helicopter deployment, the range of services also includes legally secured telemedicine activities, in addition to which paramedics from the Johanniter accident assistance organization are on 24/7 standby and train offshore first-aiders. "The offshore rescue service activities are a very costly matter, but there has been no public funding for this emergency service right up to the present", emphasized Mr. Jansen. The majority of wind farms are located in what is known as the German Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), outside of the 12-mile zone. The responsibility for healthcare in the wind farms lies solely with the operators and constructors of the wind turbines. "Under current legislation the emergency service for wind farms is not a responsibility of the state", as the operations manager made clear. FDP politician Vogt was impressed by the fact that NHC as private air rescue enterprise operates such a well functioning rescue concept in cooperation with its partners. He was surprised that state-driven endeavours are currently in progress towards using tax-financed resources in an amount of over EUR 63 million for a state healthcare/emergency concept for offshore wind parks. "I see no necessity for nationalizing a proven private-sector offshore rescue concept, especially since the state would then be fully under obligation", stressed the Economic Affairs Committee chairman.

Besides Northern HeliCopter GmbH (helicopters and medical crew), the WINDEAcare partners include r Johanniter-Unfall-Hilfe, Regionalverband Weser-Ems (emergency control centre / paramedics), Klinikum Oldenburg (medical supervision, research and development), IQ.medworks (telemedicine) and EMS Maritime Offshore GmbH (nautical staffing of the emergency control centre). The WINDEAcare product is marketed by WINDEA Offshore GmbH & Co KG.