“A helicopter crash just off the cliffs of Cove Bay, St Lucy, sent the Regional Security Services (RSS) into action yesterday evening, combing the site for survivors.
Looters who had arrived on the scene earlier could be seen scampering for cover, as camouflaged officers descended the cliffs seeking out the injured.
It took almost two hours for the search team to find victims and bring them to the cliff tops, where waiting colleagues assessed injuries and quickly sent fresh teams down to rescue other victims.”
…first paragraphs from The Nation News story Ready to run to the rescue
Is there no sober editor or journalist at The Nation newspaper?
We read The Nation article several times looking for the names of the victims and the helicopter company before we realised that The Nation reporter was talking about a simulated helicopter crash staged as part of a training programme for the Regional Security Service. We originally thought that the helicopter had crashed off Cove Bay and members of the RSS were fortuitously able to respond.
After our confusion upon reading the article in The Nation, we went to the Barbados Advocate and read an excellent article on the same subject by Karen Alleyne. All we can say is that The Nation reporters and editor must have been drunk to print the garbage story that they did.
Woe to the sad state of so-called “professional journalism” and literacy on this island! At Barbados Free Press our own Cliverton and Marcus might write an article or two when we’ve had a few rum. Robert doesn’t drink as much but he’ll have a tonic and gin or some strange concoction* while he writes.
But we’re just hacks with a blog, while the idiots who wrote and edited The Nation story are supposed to be pros – but not professional enough to clearly communicate that the story was about a SIMULATION of a helicopter crash for TRAINING PURPOSES.
It’s enough to drive a man to drink – (but not enough to get me to taste Robert’s * “peppered gin”.)
Here is The Nation’s article about the Regional Security Service’s training exercise. It is a poorly written piece that leaves the reader wondering what went on.
After you read this travesty, head to the Barbados Advocate where Karen Alleyne shows the idiots and drunks at The Nation how a professional journalist handles the same story with her piece Armed forces adopt regional approach to disaster management
From The Nation…
A helicopter crash just off the cliffs of Cove Bay, St Lucy, sent the Regional Security Services (RSS) into action yesterday evening, combing the site for survivors.
Looters who had arrived on the scene earlier could be seen scampering for cover, as camouflaged officers descended the cliffs seeking out the injured.
It took almost two hours for the search team to find victims and bring them to the cliff tops, where waiting colleagues assessed injuries and quickly sent fresh teams down to rescue other victims.
The event was not without its glitches, but officers were made better aware of the many things that could go wrong when preparing for a search and rescue.
The crash scene under the command of Warrant Officer 1 Cherrol Deane; Robert Harewood, programme officer of the Department of Emergency Management; Station Officer Gordon Boxhill from the Barbados Fire Service and colleague Callous Bishop; Colour Sergeant Peter Burgess; and Yusaf Dokrat, a member of the roving response team, saw techniques which the officers had learnt over the past three days being put into quick action.
The Basic Course One, started on June 28, saw officers of RSS member states Antigua & Barbuda, St Kitts & Nevis, Dominica, Grenada, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines and Barbados going through basic military training.
Deane said one aspect of the training was disaster preparedness, in which officers on completion of their classroom studies were taken into the field to be assessed.
Over the last three days they would have learnt incident commands, how to tie knots, disaster cycles, the national response mechanism, the regional response mechanisms, basic search and rescue, and how to use wire baskets when rescuing.
“The whole idea of the training is to produce members who can respond to any situation. You never can tell when they have to respond to a situation in a particular country where there is a disaster. And the training is to equip them to be ready to be in any response team,” Deane stated.
The Department of Emergency Management was also engaged to help facilitate the training, along with the Barbados Fire Service, the Ministry of Health and the Barbados Defence Force.
Barbados Free Press 
Yes, I was as baffled as everybody else about that ‘reporting.’ Well… it’s nothing more than ‘life pun de beach…’ – the way it is…..
BFP, I agree. From the outset the Nation should have made it clear that it was a simulation exercise. The story was meant to alarm and I daresay that was the result. There are inherent dangers in this approach to journalism.
It was bad enough that the article opened with a statement of fact about the crash but even after they started talking about the training it was not made clear that the crash was a simulation. I still had the impression that a crash happened and it was a coincidence that a training session had taken place earlier.
I do not believe that this is a matter of “sober” as bfp does. I think it is indicative of low professionalism, low standards of journalism and poor editing and supervision.
In other words, typical island journalism by “reporters” who couldn’t make it in London or Washington if their lives depended on it.
Is it possible to be amazed yet not surprised?
Yes a thousand times over. The Barbados Advocate has its moments too. For instance, instead of writing an original story on the 70th Anniversary of the Battle of Britain featuring pilots from Barbados and the Caribbean as did Barbados Free Press, the Advocate ran a canned wire story and never mentioned the contributions from the young men of the Caribbean.
Thank you to Barbados Free Press for not forgetting and for taking the time to write about Bajans in the RAF.
Free press, I am surprised that you didn’t pick up on the new Noel Lynch story. The nation re-interviewed him and he’s crying the blues about being censored etc etc etc etc but the nation never mentioned his previous lawsuit with Brass Tacks.
The brass tacks story is the first thing i thought of when reading Lynch’s statements and I thought that the nation reporter deliberately ignored it. It is very relevant to the current story but they don’t have the balls to mention it.
“Deane said one aspect of the training was disaster preparedness, in which officers on completion of their classroom studies were taken into the field to be assessed.”
Sorry folks but the language of the article made it clear to me it was a simulation, but the headline made you buy the paper didn’t it!?
the nation has become a piss poor paper, not even worth wrapping garbage in because it is now worse than garbage. but bajans still buy it. i wonder why. it is a poor reflection on our people. do you notice how the nation parade poor people as criminals but keep attention off the rich who also commit crimes. yet the most people who buy the nation are poor people. stop buying the nation and send the arrogant people on fontabelle a message. make them lose their jobs. the blogs now do the work the nation used to do many years ago.
It had me a bit puzzled as well…but then I knew that if it was a real crash I would have heard everybody talking about it. The Nation continues to be piss poor in their reporting.
Lets face facts.If there was a genuine helicopter crash in Cove Bay, we would have known about it long before the press carried the story. In fact some of us would have been informed by phone by some of our friends and relatives up in Noo York.
Come on people, if a crash did in fact happened during the day, don’t you feel that all the radio stations would have informed Barbadians through various bulletins and on-the-scene reports. All you must be complete dummies to wait over fifteen hours to see a newspaper. Come on, the digital Barbados Today, BFP or BU would have been on the ball with such a report. You all are a bunch of sick political dumberts. And West Side Davie you gone past being dumb by matching the Advocate with The Nation. Oh how pathetic.
come on, Tell Me Why,
Just admit that the Nation article was some of the most pathetic writing and editing you’ve seen anywhere – and unfortunately typical.
LOL at those who continue to fund the island’s two worst newspapers
i.e. both of them.
A recent article on Sea Coconuts
is a prime example of the mis-information the Nation regularly disseminates to the not-terribly-clever Barbadian public.
It was lifted straight out of Wikipedia
and had little if anything to do with the 2.5 in. dia dark botanical objects that recently washed ashore on South coast beaches.
Comparison of local evidence with what is illustrated at Wikipedia’s Coco de Mer webpage shows that leff han doan know whuh right hann doing.
Situation Normal All Phukt Up.
Keep on buying newspapers.
Questionable daily habit that only contributes to your misunderstanding of so many things,
not to mention global deforestation.
Well done.
I’ve said this before, the Nation’s reporters are just that….reporters, nothing else, they are not Journalists. They don’t ask questions, they only report what they are told, nothing else. Why a helicopter crash anyways ? i mean, wouldn’t it be better if they did an exercise for a plane crash instead ?………Preparing for a passenger plane crash would have covered all of the chaotic basses a helicopter can never get too.
I thought that it was just me. It was horribly written and it shows that they’re all about “drama”. Stupse
Most of you people seem to be retarded to say the least. Come on, even in the case of a car crash it is all over the electronic media in a matter of minutes and all sorts of news people are on the scene in a flash. there is nothing wrong with the article. Just that you people dont have the brain to understand it. How can there be a real helicopter crash and first reports of it be the following day ? Where were you when bajan helicopters crashed? And they say that Bajans are 90% litterate. WHAT BULLSHIT.