Illawarra flight paramedic Andrew Ryan was not part of the crew aboard the rescue helicopter the night his colleague and friend Mick Wilson died, but he vividly remembers the retrieval mission at first light.
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Mr Ryan, manager of the Ambulance Service NSW's helicopter base at Illawarra Regional Airport, did his Special Casualty Access Team (SCAT) training course with Mr Wilson and they were good friends.
The 42-year-old paramedic and father of three was killed on Christmas Eve in 2011 while trying to rescue an injured canyoner from rugged bushland near Carrington Falls.
"My impression of the environment at Bridal Veil Falls when I went in the next morning was of course coloured by what had happened the night before," Mr Ryan said yesterday.
"I spent quite a few hours in with Mick while waiting for the forensic [investigations] to be carried out and it was a cold, wet and miserable environment ... where you were continually getting wet because of the waterfall.
"I take my hat off to the teams that went in overnight that night - the ground party teams - who faced some enormous challenges in getting in there to get to Mick's aid and spent a long, cold, miserable night there."
Andrew Ryan (far left) and fellow paramedics at the funeral of Michael Wilson.A report into the accident released by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) on Thursday found that, due to fading light, Mr Wilson and his patient were accidentally pulled from a rugged ledge as the helicopter tried to winch them out.
The pair plunged about 15 metres onto a large rock.
Since the fatal accident, NSW Ambulance has implemented a number of changes, including increased training and equipment such as cameras and night-vision goggles for paramedics at Wollongong and Sydney 24-hour helicopter bases.
"For the last year we have been conducting more night winch training to heighten the crews' awareness of how difficult any environment can be at night," Mr Ryan said.
"You can liken it to walking around someone else's house in the middle of the night - you can wander around your own home at night quite easily as you're familiar with the environment and know where the doorways and trip hazards are.
"But when you're in someone else's house, you don't know where everything is and need to be more cautious. Similarly, extra levels of risk assessment and precautions need to be taken when undertaking operations at night."
The ATSB report said the accident highlighted the dangers associated with "modifying established procedures in order to complete a difficult, and potentially not previously experienced, rescue task".
Mr Ryan, while not able to comment directly on the report, said modifying procedures to suit unexpected situations was "something that challenges all emergency services personnel".
"You're given a range of skills and techniques throughout your training that will be challenged from time to time," he said.
"It's a difficult thing to know when to say, 'OK, this is well outside the scope' or 'this is within a reasonable variation of practice'. As a service, that is the sort of thing we've got to capture, but that's heavily influenced by human nature - that's just my personal opinion."
Mr Ryan has enjoyed a three-decade career with the Ambulance Service NSW and was last year named paid emergency service worker of the year in the Pride of the Illawarra awards run by the Combined Rotary Clubs of the Illawarra.
"We understand that aviation has a level of risk attached to it, conducting rescue operations in the middle of the night anywhere has a level of risk associated with it, doing it from the sky has a level of risk attached to it," he said.
"When you put all those things together it just refocuses your attention on the need to do things and take things in slow time."
