Mary HamiltonThe air ambulance landed on Cromer promenade when a 12-year-old boy suffered a severe leg injury in a fall.Ambulances were called at 12.47pm on Sunday after the boy fell more than 6ft from a wall on the esplanade.Mary Hamilton

The air ambulance landed on Cromer promenade when a 12-year-old boy suffered a severe leg injury in a fall.

Ambulances were called at 12.47pm on Sunday after the boy fell more than 6ft from a wall on the esplanade.

A ambulance land crew arrived and assessed the situation, and at 1.40pm they called out the helicopter, which carries stronger painkillers and sedatives than land vehicles are allowed to use.

Pilot Adrian Love flew paramedics Gary Steward and Daimon Wheddon to the scene, where ambulance crews and the police cleared the west end of the prom to allow the helicopter to land.

The paramedics stabilised the boy and sedated him so that he could be transported to the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital by road.

An air ambulance spokesman said while land vehicles carried a paramedic and an ambulance technician, the air ambulance carried two paramedics, and sometimes flew with a doctor on board.

The helicopters could carry and administer a range of medication that land crews could not, and were often called out by land crews once they had assessed the situation and decided the clinicians aboard the air ambulance were needed.

The helicopter also sometimes attended if there was a risk of severe head injury, as time was a key factor in treatment, but generally they flew doctors to patients and treated them in situ rather than flying patients to hospital, he added.