Hollister will need to wait a little longer before Calstar
finally calls the city home.
After announcing its plans to open a permanent Calstar operation
at the Hollister Municipal Airport almost two years ago, Calstar’s
plans have yet to reach fruition.
Hollister will need to wait a little longer before Calstar finally calls the city home.
After announcing its plans to open a permanent Calstar operation at the Hollister Municipal Airport almost two years ago, Calstar’s plans have yet to reach fruition.
Two years ago, the Hollister area was a perfect spot for a Calstar base, regional director Michael Baulch said. It had a high rate of fatal crashes and it was immune to the dense fog that could harm the Calstar helicopters.
But with economic downturn of the last year, Calstar, a nonprofit emergency responder that uses air ambulances to airlift patients from accidents to local hospitals, has raised fewer donations and fewer people are driving in the area, causing a lower number of accidents, Baulch said.
“We never wish for people to get injured but we do need to see an increase,” he said. “We need to be fiscally responsible. We want to make sure there is enough flight volume to be fiscally responsible.”
The Hollister base’s completion – it would be Calstar’s 11th in the state – has been delayed before. Calstar’s original plan was to have the base open by April 2009, but because of the economy they postponed the completion to later in the summer.
Nearly a year later, the project remains incomplete. The timing of a possible Calstar base in Hollister, meanwhile, depends on a decision over air-ambulance coverage in Monterey County.
Its leaders are in the process of requesting bids for a local air-ambulance system after nine years of service by Calstar, said Monterey County Emergency Medical Services Agency Director Tom Lynch.
The county wants to find an air-ambulance service that will cost its residents the least while maintaining high quality, Lynch said.
The county has six different providers from around the state and country that have expressed interest, he said. Monterey County hopes to find a provider by the end of the year.
And whatever Monterey County decides, it will have a direct effect on Hollister.
If Calstar doesn’t get the bid, the company has preliminary plans to move its Salinas base to the Hollister Municipal Airport, Baulch said.
“It’s something we have talked about for the past year,” Baulch said. “The situation is beyond our control – we are just going to wait and see what they do.”
The local base would bring better response time for Hazel Hawkins Memorial Hospital, said Frankie Arballo, director of public relations for Hazel Hawkins.
“It would be a huge benefit to the community,” Arballo said. “But we understand it’s their decision and they need to do what they need to do.”
The originally-planned, 41,000-square-foot base was expected to have a landing pad, crew quarters for the two nurses, one pilot team and a maintenance shed.
But Calstar does use Hollister as a pit stop for its helicopters when the weather is bad in surrounding bases such as in Gilroy or Salinas, Baulch said.
“Hollister gives us a lot of options,” Baulch said. “We can use it for a better rendezvous point with ambulances rather than having them land in a parking lot.”
