Post Description

The local fast-paced factual observational series Rescue 1 returns for a new season, following the unsung heroes of Auckland"s Westpac Rescue 1 helicopter, as they endeavour to save lives in a race against time. 

Covering dramatic boat, train, and car smashes, and traumas of every kind, this elite team of pilots, crewmen and advance paramedics take you with them on spectacular search and rescue missions over land and sea. 

Producer Martin Cleave says this series will provide the viewers with a firsthand experience of these rescues. "Rescue 1 is an observational documentary series that will put the viewer into the chopper"s front seat. They will be taken on some of the most daring, exciting and heart-wrenching rescues the country has seen." 

Filmed through the height of the busy summer season, Rescue 1"s larger-than-life crews race across the skies of the Auckland region on missions that are often improbable, sometimes apparently impossible, and for anyone else totally unfeasible, but for the viewer, always enjoyable. 

Cleave says it has been really important to tell the story of Auckland"s Westpac Rescue 1 helicopter and its crew, going behind the scenes to meet the rescuers who provide this amazing and life altering service. He explains: "This is not a negative show that focuses on deaths and tragedies - instead it is a celebration of the rescues, great characters and great story-telling with an upbeat feel to it." 

Cleave also had a personal motivation for making the show. After an accident in March last year in which he broke his neck and drowned, Cleave was choppered out of Cape Reinga and revived by the Rescue Helicopter Services. 

"Making the show was important to me on a professional level, but also on the personal. They brought me back from the dead, these people are miracle workers." 

Serving a population base of 1.3 million people, Rescue 1 covers a huge area, from Rodney District in the north, to Meremere in the south, the rugged beaches in the west and out to the remote gulf islands of Great Barrier and Little Barrier in the east, flying over 500 missions a year. 

Cleave says the breadth and depth of the rescues, and the area that Westpac Rescue 1 helicopter covers is incredible. 

"The Westpac Rescue 1 helicopter covers all types of rescues, from sea patrol, to motor vehicle, to mountain accidents," he says. "They really are everywhere and are often the difference between life and death."