To commend air force heroes, the Ministry of the Interior held “2022 Air Force Paragons” today (on the 17th) and 11 paragons were awarded by Minister Hsu Kuo-yung. Hsu Kuo-yung expressed that, whenever citizens’ lives and property are in danger, the crew of the National Airborne Service Corps (NASC), Special Rescue Squad (SRS) of the National Fire Agency (NFA) and Coast Guard Administration (CGA) always managed to provide immediate relief with their expertise. Over the last 17 years, they have collaborated to scale steep mountains and cross dangerous waters to successfully rescued 7,760 people, showing an extraordinary performance.
Hsu Kuo-yung pointed out that hiking had become prevalence in the country, resulting in an increase in accident frequency. Coupled with severe weather conditions such as torrential rains, access roads to remote mountain areas are often damaged. As of the end of October of this year (2022), NASC already dispatched 591 helicopters to implement rescue related missions and the quantity of shipped goods and materials already reached 50 t, which is doubled comparing with the same period of last year (2021). Minister Hsu delivered his special thanks not only to related personnel for their great contribution, but also to their family’s support, which enabled them to implement emergency rescue, relief and medical missions whole-heartedly.
Ministry of the Interior expressed that a number of persons were awarded this year, including 6 pilots (Hung Chih-lung, Wu Han-pin, Chen Kun-huang, Chang Chien-wei, Ho Yu-sheng and Tseng Fu-li), 1 crew member (Wen Jih-kuang), 2 service personnel (Lu Cheng-chieh and Chiang Ying-hui), 1 NFA staff (Cheng Po-Jui) and 1 CGA staff (Tsai Chung-Hsien).
Among them, Chief Pilot Tseng Fu-li ever implemented the fire rescue mission of Liberia-flagged ship in open waters of Lanyu in December 2020. At that time, 24 sailors were stuck on the ship and every second counted when implemented the rescue mission. Upon receipt of the mission, Tseng immediately flew to the destination. Although it was impossible for the helicopter to land due to the extremely poor visibility and sea state at the time, all crew members collaborated together and eventually rescued trapped personnel on time by hanging.
Besides, Chief Pilot Wu Han-pin implemented the shoal rescue mission on October 12 of last year. At that time, a number of persons working on the shoal of Gaoping River were stuck by a flash flood. The condition was extremely critical as they had to climb the excavators and wait for rescue. Upon receipt of the mission, Wu immediately departed to implement the rescued mission, successfully picked up 3 citizens who stuck on the river channel and passed them to the ground rescue personnel in a safe location nearby. The mission was completed successfully.
The Ministry of the Interior indicated that NASC was the only governmental aerial unit apart from national army. For the purpose of building an all-weather, three-dimensional and high mobility air rescue system, six heavy equipment UH-60H Blackhawk helicopters officially joined the line of emergency rescue and largely increased NASC’s search and rescue energy at sea at night. Besides, the construction of the helicopter shed factory in Taitung also completed this September as well, hoping to continuously enhance NASC’s air force search and rescue efficiency and to better protect people’s lives and property.