Questions over missing helicopter as Natasha Richardson is buried

The family and friends of Natasha Richardson attended her funeral in Millbrook, upstate New York, on Sunday, six days after the 45-year-old actress suffered a fatal brain injury in a skiing accident at Mont Tremblant in Canada. Her husband Liam Neeson and her stepfather Franco Nero were among the pallbearers who carried her coffin into St Peter's Episcopal Church, near the couple's farmhouse in the Hudson Valley.

Family mourners included the actress's mother Vanessa Redgrave (pictured centre right) - who is married to Nero - her sister Joely Richardson (second left) and her two teenage sons, Micheal and Daniel, and her niece Daisy Bevan, daughter of Joely and film producer Tim Bevan. Friends from film and theatre included Uma Thurman, Ralph Fiennes, who starred with her in the 2005 film The White Countess, Alan Rickman and Mia Farrow.

Richardson was buried in the same cemetery as her grandmother, Rachel Kempson, who as Michael Redgrave's wife was for long the matriarch of the the famous theatrical dynasty.

The funeral followed a private wake in Manhattan and took place as more questions were being raised about why Richardson's treatment was delayed for so long.

A senior Montreal doctor, Tarek Razek, said the province of Quebec lacked a medical helicopter system for airlifting patients to trauma centres - common in the United States and other parts of Canada - and that this may have contributed to her death.

"It's impossible for me to comment specifically about her case," said Razek, director of trauma services for the McGill University Health Centre, "but what I could say is ... driving to Mont Tremblant from the city [Montreal] is a 2?1/2-hour trip, and the closest trauma centre is in the city."

According to a timeline published in the Toronto Globe and Mail, there was a total delay of about six hours between her fall on the beginner's slope and her being seen by a specialist hospital in Montreal.

First she refused medical treatment because she felt fine. That cost her two hours. Then when it became clear back at her hotel that something was wrong, she was treated by medics for half an hour before being taken to the Centre Hospitalier Laurentien in nearby Ste-Agathe, a 40-minute drive.

But that hospital was not equipped to deal with head traumas. So she had to be driven by ambulance to the Sacre Coeur Hospital in Montreal, by which time six hours had been lost.

The New York City medical examiner's office has already ruled that her death from a haemorrhage of blood between the brain and the skull was an accident. ·