Helipads for Hospitals

John Nowell, Founder of the Helipads for Hospitals charity collects the latest donation of crushed aluminium cans marking the fith such donation by RC Hinckley Ambion bringing our total collected toapproaching 25000 cans over 18 months.

Cans are collected from members and friends and collated into the 1 Ton gravel bags for easier transport.

Helipads for Hospitals is a charity established to address the need for dedicated helicopter landing facilities to accomodate air ambulances. Leicester Royal Infirmary (LRI) and Queens Medical Centre, two of the latgest Accident & Emergency hositals in the East Midlands do not have dedicated, lit, landing pads.

In the case lof LRI this means that the air ambulance must land on an adjacent park and transfer its patients to ground ambulances that then have to negotiate the one way system to deliver critically ill patients to the A&E dept, also as the landing site is unlit, regulations prevent it being used during hours of darkness.

Helipads for Hospitals have identified that of the £1.4M cost of providing a lit landing pad, some £400 000 can be saved by collecting aluminium cans, crushing and smelting them and casting interlocking 'tiles' to form the basis of the landing pad, . On the subject of progress John said "we are still a year or two away as each landing pad needs approx 1 million cans but the supply of cans is growing weekly and at a rate higher than we ever dared hope for"

If you want to join in these efforts please contact John Nowell at Helipads for Hospitals helipadsforhospitals@gmail.com or Martin King at Rotary Club of Hinckley Ambion martin.king@rcha.uk