Walton is set up next door waiting for ambulence and the helo sounds a few miles away. Never seen this at night. They've got extra lighting on the ground next door. I believe is the result of auto accident south a few miles. I75 has had several today. Have you ever seen a air lift in the dark? Helo is coming in now. Very loud and the rotors lower the air temp a few degrees.

We've had a few patients we've had to fly out at night. My department doesn't have a dedicated helo pad so we light up a local field with the flood lights from the trucks and use the warning lights as markers. We also scan the field before they land for any obvious obstacles that aren't normally there.

They put down some kind of light strobes in the lot and 2 of the Fire Department vehicles have white strobes beneath their sides. I LE vehicle, 1 Fire truck and a ladder truck, ambulence. Seemed quite well coordinated. Interesting to watch from 150 feet.

Just out of my front door in my little tiny towns "Commons", the now church was a Courthouse.

Anyways, the "Commons " is a designated Life Flight landed zone for the area.

I have never seen anyone airlifted out, but a couple of times a year (they haven't done one since last spring), always at night the do training/practice with the Fire/Rescue.

It's cool and all, but it drives my pup nuts!

They fly over my house and follow the river to Louisville all the time.

ARman

We had one of the main Flight for Life hubs in the town I worked in. Major accidents or calls with injuries and we announced a "Chopper Go" and set up the LZ for the incoming bird. They flipped over onto one of our extra channels for last moment info on any obstructions we might be able to see that they could not. Very impressive piloting and I'd wager the time difference over an ambulance saved a few lives.

Kind of like landing between several goal posts along the sides of the lot next door. I've watched several of these in day light so this was a bit different. The rotors are very loud in what seems like a high idle. When lifting off they go pretty quiet. I bet a flight like this makes for one big medical bill.

I have made many pick ups, in the dark. We always appreciated a well scouted LZ. Wires are always the biggest danger. "Eyes out!" for everyone, landing or taking off. No patients survive if we crash so nothing takes precedence over looking for obstacles. Once you're moving, get back to the medicine.

Bruce

Yes, I saw Walton Fire Chief picking up a few things in the lot. Plastic bags and such blowing around from the Flea Market property. I sort of forgot, the Fire Department uses their ladder truck to block the entrance/ exit so noone can get in their way.

I have always admired and been impressed by helicopter medevac crews. It takes a special kind of cool to do what they do.

I road in one in 07. Motorcycle wreck.
I came to as the roters began to rev up. They wouldn't let me watch the take off so I passed out again for a month.

quote:

Originally posted by David Lee:
Very loud and the rotors lower the air temp a few degrees.

That's wind chill; not lowered temperature. I had fun with air mobility operations in Alaska winters back in the early '80s.

I've flown air ambulance and medevac for four different operators over the years.

I always made a point not to enquire much about the patient, or follow up on their disposition. There were several that stayed with, however, mostly kids. One was a drowning. The image is still stuck in my head decades later.

What finally did me in were several kids in one week. All died. I stopped flying medevac not long after.

Gunshots to a chainsaw to the face, burns, multi-casulaty incidents with pileups, fires, falls, and even a chainsaw to the face, lots of variety, and a host of plain-jane administrative transports in there.

50% of our patients stiffed us; we never got paid. Medevac is expensive. Extremely so, largely because a small percentage of the patients bear the cost. It's not legal to make a decision to transport based on the patient's ability to pay, but it happens. A lot. In one area, we were the only operator that refused to do that, and consequently we got used a lot (and frequently didn't get paid, either). Others would enquire about insurance status, and shortly thereafter their aircraft would go unavilable with a maintenance issue, or the pilot would be "unavailable." It's not supposed to happen, but it does. A lot.

The helicopter end of the business has a horriffic safety record, for some obvious reasons, and some not so obvious. Fatigue, unfamiliar and sometimes unpredictable conditions on scene pick-ups, obstacles, weather, and other things play into the record, which has improved a little due to HEMS (helicopter emergency medical services) initiatives...but it's still a high-risk business.

Our town did an exercise a year or two ago.
As David said, they marked the school parking lot with strobes, blocked all the streets with firetrucks and did a FOD clean up. Very impressive process.

quote:

Originally posted by sns3guppy:
The helicopter end of the business has a horriffic safety record, for some obvious reasons, and some not so obvious. Fatigue, unfamiliar and sometimes unpredictable conditions on scene pick-ups, obstacles, weather, and other things play into the record, which has improved a little due to HEMS (helicopter emergency medical services) initiatives...but it's still a high-risk business.

Concur - I live about 3 air miles from where a medical helo went down, killing all on board. They were at or below minimums on a mission that another company had turned down due to the weather

I'm out in the sticks, but close enough to a decent US highway that goes straight to the Big City that in my opinion the ships get overused, when a bus could zip a patient straight to a Level One trauma center in somewhat more time, but arguably more safely and at a lower cost. I've seen helos called for relatively nonserious issues, just because.

Nonetheless, I pushed for and got a helo LZ prep class inserted into the Basic Academy curriculum so that the candidates would know how to set up a LZ and work around the ship. Whenever possible it included an actual helo coming in and a chance to interact with the crew under calm conditions.

Round here they usually land right on the highway if it's a wreck and in a farm field if not.

I live a few blocks away from Tacoma General, the main trauma center for a lot of the Olympic counties as well as Pierce (Tacoma) and Thurston (Olympia) and the back up center for Harborview (Seattle). We get them over our house about three-four times a week. Always give them a little prayer, especially the midnight ones.

In the area where I work all our LZ's are pre flighted and reviewed with a joint team, surveyed with known GPS, marked as needed at night and FOD preflighted if we use them. There are so few ok places that all we use is prearranged ones. I can't imagine doing it on the fly, but I guess its sometimes necessary. It normally takes us less time to extract and package the person than the bird flying time to us so we can just go to a prearranged site. I still am in awe of the whole system much of the time.

quote:

Originally posted by David Lee:
Walton is set up next door waiting for ambulence and the helo sounds a few miles away. Never seen this at night. They've got extra lighting on the ground next door. I believe is the result of auto accident south a few miles. I75 has had several today. Have you ever seen a air lift in the dark? Helo is coming in now. Very loud and the rotors lower the air temp a few degrees.

I've never seen a civilian Dust Off/Life Flight in action, but part of my job in the Army was manning arming/fueling pads for our helicopters.. day and night. So, we typically stood/knelt 30 to 40 feet from where the birds landed. Our pilots used NVGs for night operations and we kept a chem light taped to a grounding rod off to the side of where the bird would land for the pilots to que on.

I had a front row seat to a dustoff flight a few years ago.
On my way home from NC to NJ on a Sunday night on I95. Pileup northbound in MD, closing all but the shoulder... traffic was just squeezing by. Just as I got to the front of the line the Trooper closed the highway. Bird came in about 15 minutes later, scooped and scooted. I doubt they were on the ground more than 5 minutes.

Nothing like the lift I got in Panama while I was in JOTC. That was due to food poisoning from bad C-Rat applesauce.
They just tossed me and my ruck onto the floor of the Huey, slammed the doors shut, and whisked me back to garrison st Ft. Sherman.
Good times.

quote:

Originally posted by motor59:
I had a front row seat to a dustoff flight a few years ago.
On my way home from NC to NJ on a Sunday night on I95. Pileup northbound in MD, closing all but the shoulder...

Maryland State Police have a large fleet of AW-139s with medevac as the primary mission, they have seven bases in a small state.

https://mdsp.maryland.gov/Orga...AviationCommand.aspx

https://mdsp.maryland.gov/Orga...ommand/Sections.aspx

My now retired brother was an aerial paramedic for half of his career with MSP, he started with the Jet Ranger and converted to the Dauphin before returning to patrol.