Helicopter Down

I am a Flight Communications Specialist, better known as a dispatcher. I launch helicopters to accident scenes getting the truly critically-injured to someplace where their lives may be saved. All in all I usually feel pretty good about my job. I mean, we; the flight crew, the pilot and my fellow Comm Specs and I, save lives. We are the lifeline between the ground crews and our helicopters.

The rock. The soul.

At any given time during a shift we may be called upon to help an elderly victim of abuse or neglect, a family whose car ran off the road in a bad storm or maybe a policeman injured in the line of duty. High-risk pregnancy is considered life threatening for both Mom and the little one and may require helicopter transport. We have responded to just about every kind of story out there at one time or another.

I could elaborate about a two year old and how he almost lost his life because of a penny, or relate to you the dozens of stroke victims who get to the hospital in time for the miraculous shot which reverses the paralysis and returns the blood flow to oxygen-starved brain cells.

I could share with you the countless motor vehicle accident responses we launch on daily, but you've seen them, or sat in traffic while the freeways were cleared or brought to a standstill while the helicopter landed for the critically injured. Maybe I could tell you about the sporting injuries, the motorcyclist who was never seen, the stabbing victim, the gunshot wound, the attempted suicide or perhaps the assault and battery victim, but that would just break your heart.

The calls we receive where CPR is in progress, the firefighter who got caught in the smoke and flames while protecting others or the officer who was injured while in the line of duty. All of these requests are devastating in their own way, but we in Flight Comm are trained to handle and respond to each with the greatest efficiency, projecting a calm and professional manner and the least fret.

We respond for the Dad who has fallen from his roof we think, "We can save this guy," only to hear later from the ER Doctor he didn't make it through the night.

We dispatched three helicopters after the family who got stuck in their house as it burned down around them. All of them required transport to separate burn centers around the state and when the frantic phone calls of anxious grandparents, despairing cousins and distraught friends came in trying to locate them made us not only pause, but grieve with them because no one survived.

People often ask how I can come to work, day after day and not become depressed myself over all the tragedies I see and I try to explain to them about the one we did save.

The neighbor next door who had a seizure and fell in front of a passing car but is now back home, enjoying his grandson.

The little boy in third grade who had a reaction to a bee sting and stopped breathing but got to go to the zoo after he recovered.

The young mom who made a wrong turn and went into a ditch but now she's in therapy and should be going home soon.

One response for a husband who, on his way home from the flower shop, had a cardiac arrest. His main concern was getting those roses to his wife and our caring flight crew who made sure she got both the roses and his card. They are coming up on their fortieth anniversary soon.

I like to think about the successes and not dwell on the failures.

EMS is a pretty tight community and I'm glad of it. There aren't many who would do the jobs we do in the real world. It's not all glamor and happy endings like Hollywood's ER, no. It's about the messy blood in the back of the chopper that takes 45 minutes to get thoroughly cleaned up, it's about bringing someone back from the edge of the void, the blackness of death and hearing him call and say thanks.

It's about saving a human life and doing it with a calmness, a reassurance and professionalism which engenders their trust in you. It's about moving quickly but with expert accuracy and an alacrity in the field which makes you look like you could do it while you sleep, but are very much wide awake.

* * * *

I've years of experience in the dispatching field but none with helicopters. On a lark, I applied for a position with a local helicopter company and while I wasn't really looking for a new career, I was looking for something more. I had gone about as far as I could go in my present company, I was in management, good salary and benefits, but very long hours.

I didn't get out in the field much anymore, I was becoming a desk-jockey; sitting behind a desk and overseeing 3 dispatchers below me. My day was full of ordering supplies, following up on vehicle service records and making sure drivers got scheduled out before any overtime clogged up the payroll. I wasn't making a positive contribution to the society I lived in and I felt like I was not only letting myself down, but the human race too.

I may not have been looking, but I certainly was hoping to be found again. So, I was hired over a very long process; background investigations, oral board interviews and extensive reference checks.

I thought, very briefly, "I could be making a mistake", but then the other side of me said, "Hey! Snap out of it!" and worked hard to get trained on everything I needed to learn to dispatch helicopters.

Then the day I was looking forward to arrived. My turn. I would finally be the responding voice on the other end of the comms, the help line to our flight crews in the field. The link between the EMS requester and the Air-support provider. Pilots would be looking to me for their point to point, medical crew would need me for their patient information, mode of injury and the like.

It was a calm shift, nothing too hard to handle. It went quite well. I remember the first minutes of the shift, in fact I can well remember every detail of the entire shift like it was a gift of a pony at Christmas.

I was still in training and I was told by my preceptor I was taking over the comms that night. After all the studying, after all the testing and training I was finally going to take the reins and handle the primary radio traffic for our helicopters.

I was responsible for the incoming calls and deciding which flight crew was best able to assist each call as it occurred. Which helicopter was most appropriate to send? That was up to me, my decisions would become linked to those people out there who needed help.

The shift started out so promising. Twelve helicopters covering four states, what could be better? My partners and I got the crew changes taken care of, and the various shift start procedures out of the way, then turned on the local news stations to watch for any breaking stories which might require our helicopter services.

The first call, a possible fractured ankle sustained in a soccer match, was blissfully text book. I took the info and passed it on to the flight crew, confirmed the ground location was appropriate for a safe landing zone, then took position reports as needed periodically and closed out the flight when the crew was home safe.

Outwardly I was calm, but internally I was eating butterflies. I wanted to shout in relief and whoop for joy but then the next call came; a neonatal transfer, then a request for a response to a motor vehicle rollover.

The calls came in, the helo's went up, more calls, more responses. About 3:30 AM, we had all but one aircraft back in quarters when we received a call for another response in the desert, single car off the side of the road, were we flying? I got confirmation from the pilot, "Yes, the weather was clear" and gave the flight nurse what information I had-sketchy though it was. Within 2 minutes the medic was calling lift off and I began flight following the aircraft to the scene.

Our company requires us to get a position report every fifteen minutes so in an emergency we will have a fairly good idea of where to send a search and rescue mission if needed. This flight was thirty-five minutes so I took two position reports, then waited the last five minutes for the crew to call over scene.

The requestor asked for an updated ETA to scene so I called the pilot over the radio and the flight nurse told me they were about a minute out. After relaying the information, I sat back and waited for my aircraft to call landing on scene.

And I waited.

Then waited a bit more.

At just about three minutes past due, I called out on the radio and got no response. I switched frequencies then switched back, getting nothing but dead air either way. My preceptor asked what else I could or should do and I began calling the ground units on scene to see if they could confirm if my crew was on the ground yet.

Nothing, no word.

No helicopter.

No response.

Then over one of the open radio channels we monitor we heard a garbled message called in by a firetruck responding to our auto crash scene: (static, static) "Fire!" (static, static, garbled sounds) "Helicopter crash," (static) "Desert."

My ears couldn't believe it. My heart didn't want to believe it either. My partners and I looked at each other for a split second, then we each took separate frequencies and attempted to contact our crew.

When the phone rang we pounced on it. It was the Department of Forestry.

"There's a helicopter down. Just off the freeway. Are you in contact with your pilot? Can you confirm the tail number, paint colors and configuration? How many souls on board?" Questions were crisply asked, crisply answered.

Breaths were held, then in disbelief, the truth of a helicopter down, MY helicopter, MY flight crew, out there somewhere in all that dead, static-filled air, in the middle of the desert hit me. Mercy Air 21 was down.

There wasn't time to stop, I launched a second aircraft to respond to the original distress call. My preceptor Russ started contacting management and my other partner Al continued flight following our only other airborne craft.

There were reports to fill out. Documentation to be done, a dispatcher's number one Golden Rule: Write EVERYTHING down.

When the phone rang again, I snatched it in mid ring. With a ringing in my ears, and my heart in my throat, I turned and told my partners, "Confirmed. Our aircraft. No survivors."

We had no tears right then, we didn't have time. The reports needed to be finished, the NTSB has no feelings when it comes to these things, they are like robots, they follow questions on a form in a droning monotone that decries any human emotion and when their call came in, we had the answers they needed. We were on auto-pilot, my partners and I. Shock didn't have time to set in.

We kept thinking, these reports are all wrong, someone screwed up, our crew will come up on the radio anytime. But they never did. Not our pilot, an older southern gentleman who loved his horse, his kids, and his wife with an openness that was endearing, nor the medic, a young woman engaged to be married in just two short weeks, nor the flight nurse, a single mom of two great kids and a gentle dedication to make those around her feel at ease by telling wonderfully corny jokes every chance she got.

There was only the painful silence in our ears of an open radio frequency and a monitor reflecting a "pages failed" message in bright red against a glaring blue background.

The second aircraft was aborted, thankfully before they flew over the scene of their downed fellows, the patients' injuries didn't require an aircraft after all, he was just drunk and ran off the side of the road. He wasn't even sober enough to realize three people literally raced to their deaths to save him.

Upper management grounded all our helicopters. Investigations would begin, safety came first. They wanted no one flying when news of their co-workers horrible crash was passed on to them.

Then the very first consolation phone call came in, one of the local hospitals calling in their condolences, then an ambulance company and one of the fire departments called. EMS is an extended family and when one of us is hurt, everyone feels the pain and loss. We work life and death situations every day, we depend on each other to keep us safe in our duties. From the dispatcher to the helicopter crew to the guy on the ground setting up the L.Z. to the nurse in the ER taking the vitals over the radio. Each person a link in a chain who affects every other link in the chain.

We, Russ, Al and I, were offered the chance to go home; we refused. We were offered a few days off; we refused. Our place was here, in Flight Comm. Where we felt we belonged, where we felt needed, where we came together as three individuals but mourned our comrades collectively as one.

They couldn't go home, but we knew they'd gone Home.

* * * *

I successfully navigated my probation period and I still dispatch helicopters.

Every once in a while, when someone takes just a minute too long to answer a position report, my heart flutters, my stomach feels like a ton of bricks and my mind thinks "What if?"

But my voice is rock steady and my fingers type just as surely and quickly as always, until I hear that beautifully alive voice on the other end.

My lifeline. My rock. My soul.

* * *

Dedicated to the memories of:
Pilot Marshall Butler
Flight Nurse Anna Coburn
Flight Medic Kalaya Jarbsunthie
...for I shall always hear and remember and listen for your voices...

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