A LORRY has ploughed into your car. Your child is trapped in the back seat. He’s screaming in pain. Or maybe your horse has thrown you and you’re lying on the ground, up a hill, with a punctured lung. Or the scrum has collapsed on your rugby-playing boyfriend and he can’t feel his legs.

More than 7,000 Dorset and Somerset people have faced situations like this over the past 10 years. And thanks to the counties’ Air Ambulance, their child’s life has been saved, the rider rescued, the rugby-player’s spinal cord has been undamaged and innumerable folk who’ve suffered heart attacks and strokes are with us today, because of the big yellow helicopter.

Tracy Bartram, who co-ordinates the service’s marketing and communications says: “We started because there was an obvious need for a service like this to cover the two counties.”

It is established medical fact that the quicker help arrives, the more likely it is that a life can be saved or, in the case of spinal or head injury, that function can be maintained.

“Over the years we’ve got busier and the service has become more needed,” says Tracy. “People are calling us out earlier which is much better for their outcomes.”

And they do call them a lot. Last year the Dorset Air Ambulance attended 982 incidents, sometimes as many as eight a day, the majority of which were road traffic accidents.

But why can’t land ambulances do the job? Why do we need an expensive chopper patrolling the skies?

The letters and emails of those they have helped answer this, says Tracy. “We have had two letters recently which stuck in my mind. The first was from a man in cardiac arrest who we picked up, managed to revive en route to hospital, but when he arrived there seemed like no hope, so his family were called. When they arrived he heard them and woke up.”

The second letter was from a mother whose children were in the car with her when it went into the back of a lorry. “We took her family to two separate hospitals in two different journeys but she has written to thank us for saving her family,” says Tracy.

Even when the outcome is devastating, the fact that the air ambulance was involved can help the bereaved. “In those situations people sometimes say they know we did everything we could and because of the helicopter they had the best possible chance, and that can help them come to terms with what’s happened,” says Tracy.

The service has plenty of willing paramedics, keen to experience the greatest medical challenges. Currently the crew, based at Henstridge Airfield in the north of the county, are trialling equipment that has been used by the military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Equipment that may have been used to help someone who has lost a limb, or to save someone who has very little blood left, are being trialled on our helicopter and eventually may be deployed by the land crews,” says Tracy.

While the service is frequently seen as something for the rural community– and the Blandford area has experienced the highest call-outs, with 86 calls last year – the air ambulance is there for everyone.

It has variously been seen on the beach, on school playing fields and in Bournemouth, when the need has arisen.

“You never know when you or someone you love will need it,” says Tracy.

It means the difference between people being stretchered over rough terrain, or manoeuvred in a bumpy Land Rover. It means the difference to many between life and death. Pensioners, babies and sportsmen have all benefited from the service.

Partly for that reason the racing driver Jenson Button agreed to become their patron. He has donated a number of signed items to be auctioned on behalf of the service, which costs £3,800 each day to run.

The service raises money through its own lottery and its yellow clothing recycling banks, which are placed around the county in the car parks of pubs and commercial premises.

“We want people to put their unwanted clothes in those banks and they will then be sold to benefit the Air Ambulance,” says Tracy.

www.dorsetandsomersetairambulance.org.uk