Tag:emergency=landing_site
 emergency = landing_site
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| Description |
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Preselected flat area for a helicopter to land in an emergency situation 
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| Group: emergencies |
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| Status: in use |
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Area with a flat surface (e.g. field, river bank, mountain plateau) that is preselected for a helicopter to land in an emergency situation. This should only be used for places that are either signposted, or in places where locals can point to a single place where emergency helicopters regularly land.
Do not use this tag for dedicated helipads at hospitals. Those are just a regular aeroway=helipad.
Differentiation
Please distinguish between a helipad and a place for an emergency. Often, helipads are marked to be visible from air, fenced and have lights, and landing there is within normal practice.
Emergency landing sites are pre-planned sites for medical or other helicopters to land, quite different from helipads. They are merely places that have a hard enough surface and are open enough (no poles or wires) that a medical or police helicopter pilot can safely land and take off from. Often some local fire department equipment/people are sent to secure the landing site and provide lighting to improve visibility in the actual emergency.
In OpenStreetMap we only map things that are verifiable, so preferably there would be a sign noting the existence of the landing site. Absent that, locals should be able to point to a single place "where the helicopters land".