Inuvik (Aug 14/06) - Flying is part of life in the North, but there is one flight Elizabeth Aviugana, a 74-year-old elder from Aklavik, will never forget.

Several years ago she suffered heart failure and a medical evacuation flight - or "medevac" as it is more commonly known - saved her life.

Alain Vaillancourt, critical care paramedic, prepares equipment on a King Air 200 plane. It is the primary medevac aircraft used in the region. - Philippe Morin/NNSL photo Flight times: In medical emergencies, the time required to reach a patient is the biggest obstacle of all. Tami Santore, an emergency room nurse in Inuvik, said it takes an average of three hours to get a patient loaded and flown back from Aklavik. The average retrieval time from Fort Good Hope is four hours and 30 minutes while someone in Tsiigehtchic can expect it will take just under three hours.

"I couldn't breathe," she said. "The air was stuck in my lungs."

After she was medevaced to the Inuvik Regional Hospital, Aviugana was treated and eventually released.

"I'm okay now," she said, adding the people who saved her were very nice.

She remains thankful to the skilled professionals who literally flew to her rescue.

"They do a good job," she said.

Alain Vaillancourt is a critical care paramedic in Inuvik and one of several medevac technicians ready to jump to the aid of Northerners on a moment's notice.

It's a job he said connects him to the lives of many people around the Beaufort-Delta region.

Since Inuvik is home to Canada's northernmost emergency room, it services Aklavik, Fort McPherson, Ulukhaktok, Paulatuk, Sachs Harbour, Tsiigehtchic and Tuktoyaktuk as well as even more distant communities including those in the Sahtu.

The hospital has access to four propeller planes and a single helicopter.

While he knows a quick response by a medevac flight saves lives - like Aviugana's case - there are often obstacles to reaching people in distress, such as winds, cold weather and the shear distances being covered.

He remembers one time a clear liquid used intravenously to treat dehydration - froze in the bag after the plane wasn't parked in a hangar.

"We had to throw it out," he said. "If it's cold, it's no good for the patient."

Tami Santore, an emergency room nurse at the hospital in Inuvik who helps co-ordinate medevac flights, said people are transported to the emergency room when community services aren't enough to help them.

"Anything critical or any sort of advanced life support," she said. "But it doesn't need to be that drastic." For instance, while a broken bone might be cast in the communities, a person with a complex fracture would be brought to Inuvik.

Santore adds medevacs also transport patients needing surgery or diagnostic scans to Yellowknife or even Edmonton depending on the situation.

Vaillancourt said the average time for "wheels off the ground" - meaning the time between a call being received to a plane taking off - is about one hour.

While he said he usually travels a few times a week, there are days when calls don't seem to stop.

"You can have three calls in a day, it happens," he said, adding 12-hour days are commonplace around the emergency room.

Santore has been in the region for two years, and said the medevac system means a lot of hard work for everyone involved.

"Everything's not at your fingertips, so you have to use your brain a bit more," she said.

As for the obstacles posed by working in a remote environment, her attitude is very positive.

"Of course, there is the weather which can cause problems," she said. "But usually regardless of that, we get the job done."