Grupamento Aereo/Military Police Brazil July 2011

Colonel Ricardo Gambaroni with EMS

In Brazil the military police do all the EMS rescue work through the fire service. They also do the usual police work, with the exception of investigative work, which is done by the civil police.
The Fire Department is part of the military police.
One reason for military police doing EMS is the lack of qualified pilots outside the military. Colonel Gambaroni explains that the Brazilian military do not have short service commissions so that most pilots trained in the military will remain there for 25 years. Because of this the best trained and most experienced pilots tend to be still in the military.
In Brazil the military police have 180 aircraft; 120 helicopters and 60 fixed wing aircraft.

Technicians working on the AS350

Although the military police do not yet have any female pilots they did have applicants for the last intake. Sadly, none were successful. There are female technicians.
There are 100,000 employees in the Sao Paulo state police of which 87 are pilots and 400 are employed in the air support unit on 11 different bases through the state. There are 4 or 5 pilots working on each base.

View from the ops room at Campo de Marte

The Sao Paulo city base is at Campo de Marte. The advantage of the 11 bases is that anywhere in the state can be reached in 15 minutes, reducing the length of time a patient must wait to get to hospital.
Ab Initio Pilot training is done on a Schweizer 300, at Campo de Marte, further training is done on each base. At the moment most of the helicopters are AS350s, but in the future they will be buying EC135s and EC145s.