work on both aircraft. Pilots typically work 12-hour shifts while medical crews work both 12- and 24-hour shifts, depending on schedule needs. Te Life Flight Network heated hangar provides protection for the aircraft and housing for the crew during shifts. Te living quarters offer a common room with full kitchen, dining room, living room, work- stations, and individual private rooms with beds. Folks living in La Grande and the surrounding area generate
their share of typical HAA scene calls: cardiac arrest or distress, strokes, respiratory distress, and automobile acci- dents. In addition, the teams see a great deal of farming injuries (typically mangled limbs or crushing trauma from farming machinery) and recreational accidents. Te latter are mainly head-and-limb injuries and heat- or cold-exposure cases among those taking advantage of the area’s wide variety of recreational opportunities. And then there’s hooky bobbing.
“I had no idea what this thing was until I moved here,”
Life Flight Network Pilot Mike Martin says. “Hooky bobbing is pulling any sliding thing behind a moving vehicle—car, ATV, tractor, you name it. Usually there’s someone either holding on to the vehicle or in the sliding thing. Tink tractor pulling a bathtub. We get a few responses to those kinds of accidents each year.” [Editor’s note: please don’t try hooky
bobbing; any activity in which practitioners commonly require air ambulance services is dangerous.] Because of the remoteness of the terrain, the La Grande
Life Flight Network base partners with local search-and- rescue (SAR) efforts. Life Flight Network crews can transport SAR team members to a location and then aid in the search from above, even using night-vision goggles when appropriate. When the missing person is found, the crew can insert rescuers and wait in a safe location for the SAR teams to bring the patient to the aircraft. Once secured, patients can be taken to a number of medical facilities, depending on need, thanks to the helicopter’s range and speed.
Service Beyond Transport When responding to the most remote areas, Life Flight Network crews can often find themselves on their own, a situation not uncommon for rural HAA operators. “Tere are many times where we’re the first responder in
more remote calls, arriving before any ground rescue or an ambulance has reached the patient,” says Life Flight Network Pilot Emily Hiller. “We experience how very vital helicopter EMS is here all the time. Sometimes we’re literally the dif- ference for a positive outcome.” It can take hours for ground rescue to get to some locations.
2020 Q3 ROTOR 43
A Life Flight AW119 MkII on approach to La Grande/Union County Airport (KLGD).
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