Even Training is Never Routine with Flight for Life

Flight is always an uncertainty. In a three-day training exercise last week, newest, largest and most modern helicopter was grounded by technical problems for the first two.

The training went on, though, using the air ambulance service's oldest aircraft, dating back to 1985. It's still a perfectly serviceable craft, but a bit too cramped to carry any extra baggage, such as two Patch reporters.

The plan was to ride along as Flight for Life demonstrated for the Waukesha Fire Department how to prepare an emergency landing zone for the arrival of a helicopter at an accident scene, how to safely approach the still-running aircraft on the ground, and finally how to help load a critically injured patient.

This process is nowhere near as easy as it sounds, especially since it coud be happening at night, in the snow of winter or the dust of summer, in the chaos and confusion of a multiple-vehicle accident, with nearly invisible power lines to contend with.

When the copter makes its final descent, pilot Janis Sierra pointed out, its rotors are creating hurricane-force winds beneath and around it. Debris on the ground can become missiles, or can be sucked up into the turbine intakes.

An unseen rod or post in a field can puncture the belly of the beast – right where it's fuel is stored.

Once down, unless there's a good reason to shut down, such as that the victim is still trapped in a crumpled vehicle, the helicopter keeps running, the main rotor still spinning overhead, the tail rotor still whirling at just the height of a tall man's head.

Loading a patient under these conditions is called a "hot load." The aircraft is loaded and unloaded from the back, through a pair of clam-shell doors underneath the tail boom. Between those doors and a safe distance from the tail rotor is a space of about seven feet.

Within that space, possibly in tall grass on uneven terrain, two medical aircrew and perhaps up to four ground emergency personnel who they have never met will have to jocky a wheeled stretcher carrying a perhaps very large person up and into the bay of the helicopter without being sliced and diced.

And here's why it's called a hot load: All this is done directly in the exhaust stream of the twin turboshaft engines, still cooking away.

Wednesday, our ride-along flight was scrubbed by trouble with the autopilot on the ultramodern EC-145 helicopter we were scheduled to fly.

Thursday, the same.

Friday, the last day of training, we got the green light. After a one-hour briefing and walk-around of the aircraft with paramedic John Emerson and flight nurse Rebecca Schwuchow at the Waukesha County Airport base, we were strapped in.

Sierra started the engines and engaged the transmission, and the main rotor blades slowly began to turn, then faster under they were a blur.

Then – "Oh, crap, I've got to shut her down."

Sierra had detected another problem. But it turned out to be a minor issue. The flight computer had failed to reset one system after the maintenance. The helicopter just needed to be rebooted.

At last, the engines whistled again, the rotor spun, we got a whiff of Jet A exhaust as Sierra advanced the throttle, and off we went on a brief flight to Waukesha Fire Station No. 3.

About a dozen and a half firefighters waited as we approached a field next door. It was a bit more realistic than the flight crew had hoped. The grass hadn't been mowed and there were large ruts in the surface. But a safe landing was made, and the helicopter was shut down.

For half an hour or so, Sierra, Emerson and Schwuchow went over the procedures with the fire crews, pointing out the danger zones and sight lines around the aircraft, walking through the procedures step by step.

The engines would be started again, and two groups of firefighters would practice actual hot loads of the stretcher, breathing the exhaust and feeling the beat of the rotors.

Sierra was just about to climb back into the cockpit to restart the engines for the exercise when a loud alarm sounded.

"We gotta go, guys!" she shouted as she waved everybody back, out of the field, back under the eaves of the firehouse.

A critical cardiac patient needed emergency transport from Burlington to Milwaukee. Training woud have to wait. The engines whispered, whistled, screamed, a wave of hurricane wind flattened the grass, and away went our ride home.

Flight for Life was in action.