FLYING IN THE CLOUDS
A head-on collision this morning just
south of Ukiah on the off-ramp closed the ramp and stalled traffic going into
Ukiah. A woman pinned in the wreckage required fast transport and advanced
medical intervention. The woman's injuries required transport to a trauma
center, over an hours distance in Santa Rosa. CALSTAR's state-of-the-art air
rescue helicopter was called. The only problem is that most of Sonoma and
Mendocino county are covered with thick clouds, nearly to the ground. That's
where I come in.
Time is the enemy for people severely injured.
Rapid medical intervention and transport to a trauma center saves lives and
mitigates their pain, suffering and length in the hospital. Getting there can
be a problem in a rural area like Mendocino County, especially when the weather
is bad.
The initial call rattling from our pager/radisos starts the adrenalin flow. No coffee needed to start this day. We were put on standby. That’s a strange concept for us since we are always on standby. No official request yet. The accident was close to our airport base, so we heard the fire engines, the CHP, police, and ambulances. Any chance of dozing back off rapidly disappeared.
Weather would be a factor. Fog, more correctly costal stratus, shrouds the coast and inland valleys during the summer in California. Santa Rosa's airport was reporting 200 feet overcast with one-mile visibility. That means the vertical distance between the bottom of the clouds and the runway is just 200 feet, while the distance you can see horizontally is only one mile. The absolute minimum for any landing aircraft is 200 feet and one half-mile visibility. Low weather, but not impossible.
It’s my call whether to accept any flight. A vital decision when someone’s life may hang in the balance. I do not take this responsibility lightly. I calculate the risk to its minimum for the crew and me as the basis for accepting a flight. Often, not an easy equation. I do every flight possible. As painful as it may be, I do not accept any flight that is too dangerous or exceeds our capability. It does no one any good if we go down. I also have to insure that once I have the patient on board that I am 100% certain that I will get them the hospital. I do not want to tell the medical crew, while they are performing their heroics in the back of my helicopter, that I erred and cannot get them to the correct hospital.
Flying over an accident scene may appear as absolute chaos to the untrained eye, with emergency vehicles, wreckage strewn all over, first responders and gawkers all crowding around. It is often beauty to those who deal with it every day. Sometimes the scene is deadly. There are wires, trees, and huge dust clouds from the rotors, tricky winds, darkness and lots of other things waiting to smite thee. Today was an easy landing. Getting to the hospital is going to be the problem.
Climbing out of the Ukiah valley with azure blue skies, our patient was under the watchful treatment of our excellent nurses. I estimated it would take us twenty minutes to reach the Santa Rosa airport, our destination because of the low weather. I radioed Oakland Center, the Air Route Traffic Control Center, responsible for the airspace over the costal mountains. Flying above the snow white clouds with the green mountains framing them, I called, “Oakland center, lifeguard helicopter CALSTAR 4, five miles southeast of Ukiah, climbing out of three thousand for seven thousand, requesting and IFR clearance to Santa Rosa with Mike”. Drop me a note if you want to know what all the pilot talk means.
Lifeguard is a special call sign medical evacuation aircraft may use. It’s like turning on lights and sirens. It gives us priority over all other aircraft. They say even over Air Force 1, although given the latest claims to executive privilege and F-16 protection, I won’t argue that point.
Oakland Center works with us everyday. We appreciate them and they are confident we know what we are doing—they grant all our requests quickly. To avoid dragging their system to a crawl and inconveniences the flying public in northern California, I stayed in visual conditions until I was lined up with the runway 15 miles out. Oakland gave me my clearance without my asking and “Otto pilot”, our very capable autopilot started us down through the clouds for the runway.
When you first enter the clouds they are bright and white. As you descend, the clouds thicken and turn grey and ominous, as if they are aware of the helicopter rushing toward the ground at a thousand feet per minute. It’s a reminder that I can’t just sit there and let Otto do all the work. I go through my checklists and callouts and look outside for the lead-in lights, the runway, anything that doesn’t look like a cloud. I see no birds, hummingbird or other, in the clouds with me.
My radar altimeter flashes and beeps, a last reminder that I need to see the ground before I can land. I set it for a hundred feet higher than my lowest descent altitude. I can see straight down through the mist and notice a tree, a road, but nothing straight ahead where I have to land. Otto has smoothly decelerated the helicopter from 120 knots to 70 knots. If your are flying toward the ground through the clouds, its better to do it slower. Nice thing that a helicopter can do those airliners cannot.
There it is! The lights, the runway and even better our competitors sitting by their helicopter on the ramp watching us land. Two minutes later our patient and two great flight nurses are in an ambulance for the short ride to the hospital. I shut the helicopter down and call for the fuel truck to get us ready should we be called again quickly. As I sit in the helicopter and wait for the crew, I notice a gull sitting on the rotor blade. They don’t fly in the clouds either.
The initial call rattling from our pager/radisos starts the adrenalin flow. No coffee needed to start this day. We were put on standby. That’s a strange concept for us since we are always on standby. No official request yet. The accident was close to our airport base, so we heard the fire engines, the CHP, police, and ambulances. Any chance of dozing back off rapidly disappeared.
Weather would be a factor. Fog, more correctly costal stratus, shrouds the coast and inland valleys during the summer in California. Santa Rosa's airport was reporting 200 feet overcast with one-mile visibility. That means the vertical distance between the bottom of the clouds and the runway is just 200 feet, while the distance you can see horizontally is only one mile. The absolute minimum for any landing aircraft is 200 feet and one half-mile visibility. Low weather, but not impossible.
It’s my call whether to accept any flight. A vital decision when someone’s life may hang in the balance. I do not take this responsibility lightly. I calculate the risk to its minimum for the crew and me as the basis for accepting a flight. Often, not an easy equation. I do every flight possible. As painful as it may be, I do not accept any flight that is too dangerous or exceeds our capability. It does no one any good if we go down. I also have to insure that once I have the patient on board that I am 100% certain that I will get them the hospital. I do not want to tell the medical crew, while they are performing their heroics in the back of my helicopter, that I erred and cannot get them to the correct hospital.
Flying over an accident scene may appear as absolute chaos to the untrained eye, with emergency vehicles, wreckage strewn all over, first responders and gawkers all crowding around. It is often beauty to those who deal with it every day. Sometimes the scene is deadly. There are wires, trees, and huge dust clouds from the rotors, tricky winds, darkness and lots of other things waiting to smite thee. Today was an easy landing. Getting to the hospital is going to be the problem.
Climbing out of the Ukiah valley with azure blue skies, our patient was under the watchful treatment of our excellent nurses. I estimated it would take us twenty minutes to reach the Santa Rosa airport, our destination because of the low weather. I radioed Oakland Center, the Air Route Traffic Control Center, responsible for the airspace over the costal mountains. Flying above the snow white clouds with the green mountains framing them, I called, “Oakland center, lifeguard helicopter CALSTAR 4, five miles southeast of Ukiah, climbing out of three thousand for seven thousand, requesting and IFR clearance to Santa Rosa with Mike”. Drop me a note if you want to know what all the pilot talk means.
Lifeguard is a special call sign medical evacuation aircraft may use. It’s like turning on lights and sirens. It gives us priority over all other aircraft. They say even over Air Force 1, although given the latest claims to executive privilege and F-16 protection, I won’t argue that point.
Oakland Center works with us everyday. We appreciate them and they are confident we know what we are doing—they grant all our requests quickly. To avoid dragging their system to a crawl and inconveniences the flying public in northern California, I stayed in visual conditions until I was lined up with the runway 15 miles out. Oakland gave me my clearance without my asking and “Otto pilot”, our very capable autopilot started us down through the clouds for the runway.
When you first enter the clouds they are bright and white. As you descend, the clouds thicken and turn grey and ominous, as if they are aware of the helicopter rushing toward the ground at a thousand feet per minute. It’s a reminder that I can’t just sit there and let Otto do all the work. I go through my checklists and callouts and look outside for the lead-in lights, the runway, anything that doesn’t look like a cloud. I see no birds, hummingbird or other, in the clouds with me.
My radar altimeter flashes and beeps, a last reminder that I need to see the ground before I can land. I set it for a hundred feet higher than my lowest descent altitude. I can see straight down through the mist and notice a tree, a road, but nothing straight ahead where I have to land. Otto has smoothly decelerated the helicopter from 120 knots to 70 knots. If your are flying toward the ground through the clouds, its better to do it slower. Nice thing that a helicopter can do those airliners cannot.
There it is! The lights, the runway and even better our competitors sitting by their helicopter on the ramp watching us land. Two minutes later our patient and two great flight nurses are in an ambulance for the short ride to the hospital. I shut the helicopter down and call for the fuel truck to get us ready should we be called again quickly. As I sit in the helicopter and wait for the crew, I notice a gull sitting on the rotor blade. They don’t fly in the clouds either.
Posted: Fri - August 12, 2005 at 06:34 PM
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Published On: Dec 09, 2006 10:23 PM
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Published On: Dec 09, 2006 10:23 PM