Helicopter Rescue

Looks painful.

Looks like the pilot gave it a shot and then said, o well, to hell with the stretcher, am flying back.


There is an adventure trip in Chile I believe where you get on a chopper, bungee jump in a active volcano, then hang upside down on your return trip for about 5-7 mins back to airport. I would volunteer for that instead of what that poor woman faced
 
The Phx area does lots and lots of these. Seems there's one or two on the news every week during the warm season.

I'm surprised the copter team made such an error. They're all experienced pros (of course!).
 
Can you say dizzy? I'm sure she was terrified.
 
Did they forget to hook in the rescue-tech ?
 
k9medic said:
Most hoists like that are only rated for 1 person. The normal course of action though it to attach a tag line to prevent that type of stuff.
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600lbs would be the typical limit on a hoist and the CMC Traverse stretcher is 18lbs.

More likely scenario is that the operator was lacking a hoist qualified rescue tech.
 
k9medic said:
Most hoists like that are only rated for 1 person. The normal course of action though it to attach a tag line to prevent that type of stuff.
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Pilot said the trail / tag line “broke.” Tried different techniques of reducing the spin and none worked. Said it’s a rare event that this sort of thing happens.
 
I have a sorta relevant story about this.

Many years ago I got a call from a hang gliding friend that lived near the base of the Sandia Peak tramway, he had seen another friend disappear behind a rock face near Sandia Crest and not come back out. To shorten the story, 50 minutes later I was standing in the parking lot on Sandia Crest with three friends that had been at my house when the call came.

We fanned out and headed down the west face of the mountain, and 15 minutes later we found our friend, 40 feet up in a pine tree after hitting a rock face. He was seriously injured with multiple fractures and near death. I climbed the tree with another guy, we cut him loose and I somehow brought him down holding him with one arm extended to keep him from snagging on the tree.

I had grabbed a down mummy bag on my way out the door, and it saved his life. In addition to the fractures he had internal injuries. He was in shock and had lost blood.

This where my story is similar to the events in the above video.

About 40 minutes later a HH-3 from Kirtland appeared, and as the upslope winds were gusting over 20 the pilot turned it around and backed toward the rock face, about 150 feet over our heads. I thought he was gonna crash on top of us. They deployed a crewman on the hoist, and he was going in circles about 75 feet in diameter and spinning like a top. They pulled him back in, and lowered a Stokes litter to us. It was spinning crazily too, they just lowered it until it hit something.

We splinted our injured buddy's broken femur and fib/tibia (it was an open fracture) with pine branches and dacron ties cut from his glider sail, put him in the litter, and headed down the mountain as it got dark.

We intercepted the La Luz trail after descending around 1,000 vertical feet, and we reached the trailhead about 1 AM. There were police, fire, Forest Service, TV crews, and an ambulance there. We gave him to the EMTs and went home exhausted. My friend was in the hospital for two weeks, he recovered and resumed flying.
 
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@weilke - I was thinking for the agusta 109, a breeze eastern hoist would be on it like is on the 407. Those are 300lbs.

Taglines do break, but you are also taught some techniques to stop the spinning. The hoist operator could have lowered the basket out of the wash to start.




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k9medic said:
@weilke - I was thinking for the agusta 109, a breeze eastern hoist would be on it like is on the 407. Those are 300lbs.

Taglines do break, but you are also taught some techniques to stop the spinning. The hoist operator could have lowered the basket out of the wash to start.

He did lower it out of the rotor wash to try and stop the spin. When he brought her back up, she spun even worse.


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This guy didn't even make it far enough to get onto a helicopter:

 
Not sure if I’d rather spin violently or take a swim. ;)

 
Zeldman said:
Wow.... or being electrocuted while in transit.

That was literally inches from being a total disaster.
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Yep. Just imagine if they were a little bit higher and drug them through the wires. That would have been ugly.
 
Matthew said:
When I think of helicopter rescues, I always remember watching this one:
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As a side note, it's my understanding the 206L-1 in the video will be an exhibit in the new National Law Enforcement Museum in DC. If interested they also have a short video series of the pilot's explanation of that day's rescue.

Scroll to about the 9th line of videos:
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheNLEOMF/videos
 
Matthew said:
When I think of helicopter rescues, I always remember watching this one:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/video...156f02-3d50-11e1-9d6b-29434ee99d6a_video.html
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Watching the bravery and selflessness of the man in the water who repeatedly gave the lowered life ring to others before drowning allowed us to witness what valor the average man is capable of. He was a true hero, not the kind that gets tagged with that title for the slightest thing these days.

The "sixth passenger," who had survived the crash and had repeatedly given up the rescue lines to other survivors before drowning, was later identified as 46-year-old bank examiner Arland D. Williams Jr. The repaired span of the 14th Street Bridge complex over the Potomac River at the crash site, which had been named the Rochambeau Bridge, was renamed the "Arland D. Williams Jr. Memorial Bridge" in his honor. The Citadel in South Carolina, from which he graduated in 1957, has several memorials to him. In 2003, the new Arland D. Williams Jr. Elementary School was dedicated in his hometown of Mattoon in Coles County, Illinois.

When Lenny Skutnik stripped off his coat and boots and then threw himself into the freezing water to rescue Priscilla Tirado, again the personal bravery of the individual was almost unbelievable.

These men and the others who acted similarly that day should always be remembered for their willingness to sacrifice their own lives to save another.
 
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3393RP said:
When Lenny Skutnik stripped of his coat and boots and then threw himself into the freezing water to rescue Priscilla Tirado, again the personal bravery of the individual was almost unbelievable.
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Can't remember where I read it: After he got out out the water, he put his coat back on, walked home, and got on with his life. Just a regular guy.
 
Matthew said:
Can't remember where I read it: After he got out out the water, he put his coat back on, walked home, and got on with his life. Just a regular guy.
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He seemed mortified by the attention he received as President Reagan's guest at the State of the Union speech a few days later.
 
3393RP said:
The "sixth passenger," who had survived the crash and had repeatedly given up the rescue lines to other survivors before drowning, was later identified as 46-year-old bank examiner Arland D. Williams Jr. The repaired span of the 14th Street Bridge complex over the Potomac River at the crash site, which had been named the Rochambeau Bridge, was renamed the "Arland D. Williams Jr. Memorial Bridge" in his honor. The Citadel in South Carolina, from which he graduated in 1957, has several memorials to him. In 2003, the new Arland D. Williams Jr. Elementary School was dedicated in his hometown of Mattoon in Coles County, Illinois.
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One of the best Time Magazine articles ever written was this one: https://sgorelick.files.wordpress.c...e-man-in-the-water-time-magazine-01-25-82.pdf
 
Piperonca said:
One of the best Time Magazine articles ever written was this one: https://sgorelick.files.wordpress.c...e-man-in-the-water-time-magazine-01-25-82.pdf
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A good read. It made me long for the days when producing good journalistic content took admirable skill and was meaningful.

Now I get to read cut and paste fragments, littered with misspellings and grammatical errors, and the purpose of the disjointed and unedited cacaphony is to insult the reader and blame him for the social ills of our unjust society.
 
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