11:52:00
Staff Sergeant Robert Toronto, Flight Medic
Idaho National Guard, Detachment 1
Delta Company 1st of the 112th
Security and Support, Air Ambulance
I HAD MY MILITARY flight gear on. Camouflage-colored flight suit. Star Wars–looking helmet with black visor. Scared her, our female patient, who had just gone through the worst night of her life.
Off came the helmet. Yes. Better. Now Heather could see my eyes and be reassured that we were here to get her and her parents off this mountain. In a few minutes, she would be the first of her family to be hoisted up into our hovering UH 72.
Rotor wash throwing snow, Chief Warrant Officer Mitchell Watson, a Blackhawk and Lakota pilot, skillfully kept the aircraft about 120 feet above us as Crew Chief Matt Hotvedt, standing on the Lakota’s skids, slowly lowered the 300-foot hoist cable to us on the ground where Heather was already packaged in one of our SKEDs.
Seeing her growing fear, I leaned close to Heather’s face and explained exactly what was going to happen. “We are going to attach the SKED to the hook. As the cable lifts you up to the aircraft, we will be holding a tag line here at ground level that will keep you from spinning in circles.”
My well-intended words seemed to provide little reassurance to someone so scared. I could understand why. Our patient was in pain, cold and stiff from lying on the ground for hours. Even worse, she had just fallen out of the skies, surviving something that many people do not survive. And what were we about to do? Take her back up into the air. Like, really?
“The ride will be noisy and windy,” I said, seeking to comfort her in her distress, “but short. Once you reach the helicopter, Matt will swing you into the Lakota, and they will fly you to the landing zone to the waiting Air St. Luke’s helicopter that will take you to the hospital.”
With that, Heather gave us her last bit of courage. I gave her my earplugs.
Early Sunday morning, our commander, Brian Fox, himself an Apache and Lakota pilot, moved fast, gathering pilots and crew after speaking with Lieutenant Colonel Brian Shields, the State Army Aviation Officer, also an Apache and Lakota pilot.
Around dawn, Scott Prow and Dave Guzzetti, pilots in our National Guard unit who flew medical evac on the civil side, knew that the Guard had hoist capability on the UH 60 Blackhawk and UH 72 Lakota. And, needing a hoist on a rescue in the Owyhees, well, the solution was evident.
The pair actually started making the request ahead of the formal process through AFRCC, something not completely unusual. When our guys got a heads-up or knew something was happening, especially when it dealt with emergencies in the rough terrain of Idaho, they would get on the phone. So, on the non-official side, Shields got going on the request, calling operations officers such as Brian Fox to get crews spun up as the formal process proceeded down its course.
Because our MEDEVAC unit is not a 24 hours a day, seven days a week operation, we are not on a string to go do these things quickly. It takes a couple of hours to get it going, especially on a Memorial Day weekend, because we don’t have guys sitting at Gowen, waiting for things to happen.
This meant that Fox had to literally go down a call sheet of pilots and crews, asking if they were available. Of course, none of us in the unit would turn down such a request if we were physically able. We would do everything we could to help save lives.
But it was Sunday morning. Memorial Day weekend. Were any pilots or crews around?
Fortunately, Fox reached Chief Warrant Officer Mitchell Watson and got a quick yes. I was another yes, along with Staff Sergeant Al Colson, a crew chief with decades of experience under his belt. Then, there was Sergeant Matt Hotvedt, also a crew chief, who being fast asleep, got woken up with “Oh, gosh. It’s the boss on the phone.”
“Are you available to do a rescue?”
Matt was available. Fox had a UH 72 Lakota crew.
Doing hoist work was not new to the Guard. Around 1990, the State of Idaho recognized that it needed the resources of a MEDEVAC unit. A small contingent from the National Guard, called “Guardian,” flying Hueys, ended up being that resource. Around 2004, that unit got disbanded when Idaho decided they didn’t needed us anymore because on the civilian side there were helicopter emergency medical services agencies such as Air St. Luke’s and Life Flight, and it was simply cheaper to contract them. Then five or six years later, Idaho revisited that idea, discovering that HEMS agencies were not really willing to do hoists because of the training, risk, and cost involved.
The beauty of a hoist is that you can lower a person down or pick someone up in geography where you can’t land an aircraft safely. A downed pilot in the jungle. Getting a medic to the bottom of a cliff. In Idaho, helicopters with hoists were particularly important given our mountainous, rugged terrain.
However, doing a hoist is also high risk because of the many variables that could go wrong. Something as simple as a crewmember’s carabiner not being fully engaged could cause an accidental loss of life. The aircraft could hit trees or the side of a cliff, or if the cable gets hooked around a tree while the aircraft is in forward flight, the aircraft, caught on a shorter and shorter tether, could end up plowing into the ground.
For these reasons, our hoists had an explosive cartridge; basically a shear able to cut the cable. On the Lakota, we also carry a big backup pair of cutters designed to cut the cable if all else fails.
“What about the poor people being lifted?” we get asked. If it’s a lose-lose scenario, it does no good to lose the aircraft and its crew. For the Blackhawk with two pilots, the loss would be four to five people. On the Lakota, three or four. Of course, we never want to drop a person and will do everything possible, such as hovering the aircraft down and letting out the slack but if, as the last resort, it comes down to cutting the cable or bringing down the aircraft, we will cut the cable.
Because hoists are high risk, we go by the numbers, double and triple checking before going out the door. We lay hands on each other’s equipment, making sure that everything is correctly fastened. Inside the aircraft, we are always harnessed and tethered. So if the pilot needs to make an abrupt move with the door open, we won’t go far if we fall. Before lifting off, I always put my hand on the ceiling and trace my tether line back to the vest to make sure that it is locked on correctly.
Because of the risk level, we had to get permission of the State Army Aviation Officer to train with a “live load,” meaning having a living human being on the cable.
Mitch, Matt, and Al trained first on the Blackhawk and then did the same program on the Lakota, beginning with the hoist cable, followed by dummy weights, weights at night, and finally live loads. On the Lakota, the hoist is outside the aircraft and pivots away from the skids. The cabin door is about half the size of the Blackhawk, making it a tricky maneuver to move the patient inside.
Amazing how things work out sometimes. Only a few days ago, Staff Sergeant Al Colson and another longtime crew chief, First Sergeant Williamson, the certifying individuals, had “certified” us as a crew. Now, here we were, three days later, not an official unit yet being requested to do a live hoist.
If we had been called a week earlier to do this hoist, we would have had to turn them down because we had to be signed off by the Army, meaning that we would had to have successfully completed the necessary training and scenarios before doing a live mission like this one, which we had not done yet.
Before we turned a blade, everything had to be walked through the chain of command, starting with Lieutenant Colonel Shields, the person responsible for all of the Army aviation assets in Idaho, about 35 aircraft, all housed at Gowen Field, along with their crews, logistics, and additional personnel.
While Matt, Al, and I got the aircraft and medical gear ready, Mitch pulled together his weather and safety briefs, including a risk assessment worksheet. Whenever a crew goes on a flight, whether is it for training or real world, they go through a risk management process. Mitch looked at every factor that could impact safety. Where is the crash site? What are the weather conditions at the crash site? What is the elevation? Who could he talk to on scene? Did we have their frequencies? How many people needed medical attention?
If the risk tally is high, or any time a hoist is used for a live lift, the risk level is automatically elevated to high risk, necessitating approvals from the chain of command, specifically Lieutenant Colonel Shields.
After completing that worksheet, Mitch got on the phone with Shields, a triathlete who was already out on his road bicycle doing a five-hour ride, preparing for his next race. As the senior leader, Shields was the mission approver, the one making the call based on the information provided, assessing whether or not it was going to be okay for us to execute the mission.
As the State Aviation Officer, Shields works for our one-star general, General John Goodale. During the ride-stop-calls process of speaking with Mitch, Brian Fox, State Comm, and the AFRCC, Shields kept Goodale apprised throughout the morning because missions like this one could draw media attention. He also talked to Colonel Tim Marsano, who ran our public affairs, for that same reason.
Initially we were shooting to use a UH 60 Blackhawk to do the mission, but because of timing along with aircraft and crew availability, we couldn’t come up with the crew to man the UH 60. We did have the UH 72 crew available and ready to go.
For Shields, the biggest question here was the Lakota itself. There had not been many live hoist missions with the UH 72, and although it was a capable aircraft, it was not as powerful as the UH 60 Blackhawk. For that reason, doing risk assessment on this particular mission required a different thought and planning process.
The issue was a mechanical one. The Guard had books full of details on what you could and could not do with the Lakota at different altitudes, temperatures, wind conditions, and weight. The last thing Shields wanted was for his guys to go all the way out to the Owyhees only to realize that they could not do the mission because the Lakota, being more limited, did not have enough power.
Confident in the skills of everyone involved, when all was said and done, Shields believed Mitch was the right pilot to assess whether it was going to be safe to do this mission with the Lakota. Given Mitch’s knowledge, experience, and skill level as a pilot and when in command, to Shields he was the perfect guy to fly our first live hoist using the UH 72.
Fox was similarly supportive, saying to Shields, “Yes. We can do it. This is what we have been trained to do.”
Regarding patient care and the crash itself, our information was limited, even unclear what we were actually being asked to do. Nothing all that unusual in MEDEVAC work.
When information goes through multiple people, it often morphs into something completely different from what is actually the case on the ground. Nine times out of ten, what you are told on the phone is not what you discover once you get there—even basic information about power lines running through the LZ or how hard it is going to be to get to the patients.
On this mission, we had some advance information because Crew Chief Al Colson had already been pulled out of bed once, about 4:30 a.m., to assist in the rescue. As a private, commercial, and instrument-rated pilot, Al also volunteered his time with the Air Force Civil Air Patrol, often training pilots how to fly their fixed-wing Cessnas on SAR missions. Early this morning, he got a call from CAP’s mission coordinator, a man who also happened to be Al’s dad.
“Al, we need a pilot. There is a downed aircraft in the Owyhees. They know approximately where it is, but they can’t put eyes on it.”
Normally, HEMS companies such Air St. Luke’s and Life Flight don’t do SAR due to the fact that it is often expensive and not an effective use of resources. For those reasons, the National Guard and CAP were usually requested. With its fixed-wing Cessna, the Civil Air Patrol could put an observer in the right front seat and a scanner in the back while a pilot flies the aircraft.
Hustling into his CAP uniform, Al got to the Nampa Airport a little after 5:00 a.m. He managed to round up two additional volunteers, and they immediately started going through aircraft preflight and getting clearances through CAP channels to launch. Do you have a crew? Is the weather good to launch? Do you know where the search area is located? Have you been briefed? It was a process that entailed a number of safety checks so that the fixed-wing was not some rogue aircraft bouncing around out there.
During that process, State Comm told Al about “whiteout conditions and low ceilings” in the search area. Well, that brought everything to a halt. Safety of the search crew was now an issue.
If you were in a helicopter, you could pick your way through those conditions. You can stop, hover, slow down, or turn around. That option does not exist in a Cessna 182 aircraft. You can make tight turns but, if you get boxed into an area, you can’t come to a complete stop, hover, turn around, and go back.
Then Al heard that Air St. Luke’s was in the search area and a big lightbulb went on. Who was flying? Scott Prow. Time-out. A fellow National Guard pilot. What was he seeing?
Weather was degrading.
That settled it. CAP was staying on the ground ’til sunrise. If Scott said that the weather was getting bad, Al was not going to go out there in a fixed wing. Given the weather, Al would not be able to launch until 8:30 to 9:00 a.m. at the earliest.
A little after 6:00 a.m., Al got word from State Comm to stand down. Scott and his crew had found the crash site.
Cool.
Al closed up the hangar, grabbed his paperwork, thanked everyone, and headed home. He crawled back into bed around 6:30 a.m.
A little after 7:00 a.m., Al heard the phone ring again. This time it was Mitch. “I need a crew chief. They are calling for a hoist.” Given that Al could man either the Blackhawk or the Lakota, it would be great to have him on the mission.
“It is in the Owyhees,” Al remarked.
“How did you know?”
After telling Mitch about his morning thus far, Al grabbed his National Guard flight suit out of the closet while his wife, used to these early morning emergency calls, got up quickly to fix him a thermos of hot coffee along with a few granola bars.
Given some in-house ribbing about the Blackhawk and Lakota’s capabilities, we were pleasantly surprised when Mitch said, “We are taking the Lakota.”
Although it had less power than the Blackhawk, the Lakota could be flown with one pilot, unlike the Blackhawk, strictly a two-pilot utility helicopter. Although the Blackhawk could go up much higher, when it came to a medical evacuation mission, the Lakota was well equipped.
Still, as Mitch will tell you, a helicopter is a helicopter in many respects, saying that flying the Blackhawk was much like driving an old three-quarter-ton farm truck—not the prettiest thing out there nor the smoothest, but extremely capable and reliable; whereas the Lakota was like a late-model compact luxury SUV, something very refined that gets the job done.
During this preflight work, Mitch did the analysis on the lift itself. Temperature. Altitude. The weight of the load, projecting 250 pounds and less per person. Fuel needed to get to the crash site, do the hoists, and get back again to Gowen.
The Lakota burned, on average, four to five hundred pounds per hour. A full tank of gas is about 1400 pounds. Less fuel would save us a lot of weight, but the last thing we wanted was to be in the middle of the rescue and have only five minutes of fuel left. That would do nobody any good.
Matt and Al, the maintenance side of the house, went down their checklist with the aircraft itself, making sure we were safe to fly. Unlike the civilian side where the aircraft is on the pad with helmets inside the cockpit ready to go, Matt and Al had to do all the necessary maintenance prep work, gathering specialty gear, pulling together equipment that had not yet been put together, and towing the Lakota out of the hangar.
Before taking off, we conducted a crew briefing to make sure that we were prepared, understood our roles, and were properly equipped. We went through a checklist including the nature of the mission, where we were going, what to expect, and what to do in case of unplanned contingencies. In addition, we went through a hoist mission brief where we talked about the specific hoist procedures. At the end, Mitch asked if anyone had any questions or comments. Hearing none, he asked, “Do you acknowledge the mission brief?” and with affirmative answers, we prepared to lift.
On the medical side, I had packed for the worst-case scenario given the limited information I had about the patients. If I had extra equipment we didn’t need, we would simply temporarily off-load it at the LZ, which would give the Lakota more performance.
A plane wreck in the mountains. Of course my imagination had run wild.
Bottom line, I was 99 percent sure we would be going out there to do some kind of body recovery because you don’t slam into a mountainside without having fatalities. Even though Fox told me that there were survivors, I still had the thought, “There are probably one or two who are dead.”
Little could I have imagined.
About 25 minutes. A short hop from Gowen to the Owyhees.
As we were en route, Dave Guzzetti, still at the landing zone, talked to Mitch over the radio, telling him about the weather and where to find the LZ. Having Dave relay exact information was awesome because Dave not only knew Mitch well but he was also a Lakota pilot who could answer Mitch’s specific questions.
As we drew near the Owyhees, it was hard for me to believe that I had been a soldier for most of my life. Starting in the military in 1986 as a 19 Delta, a cavalry scout, I became a medic after meeting my wife, then served as a Marine, and for a short period of time worked as an EMT for the Forest Service. I found that I enjoyed caring for others in crisis and got back into the Guard and joined a Charlie Med unit.
Deploying in 2004 and 2005 to Iraq, I was an infantry medic for the 1/163rd infantry on a small FOB (forward operating base) called “McHenry.” There, I experienced some of the most challenging years of my life. Things were fairly busy in Iraq. Every day we were dealing with tough situations. Suicide bombings. Shootings. Carnage. Sickness. Human beings doing unspeakable things.
In war, as a medic, things can get heated. People screaming and yelling. Confusion. Things blowing up. It can be a real eye-opener. Very surreal. Although we did a great deal of humanitarian work in Iraq, it was as ugly as it can get. For me it truly was “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
Once I got back home to the States, it took me some time to get my head back on straight, but I did, having my wife and great friends to talk it out with me. I chose to stay a medic and eventually became an instructor for the Army in a program called “Combat Lifesaver” where I taught advanced medical techniques to regular soldiers so that they would be prepared to act anywhere, no matter where they were deployed.
Many men going through my class would balk at the training, saying, “Sergeant, we are never going to use this stuff because we are not going outside of the wire.” Didn’t matter. I made the training as close to combat as possible with artillery and 50-caliber simulators going off and people shouting, trying to stress out the students. I wanted them to experience what it was like to focus on providing medical care when the world around you was blowing up.
Glad I did.
Not too long ago, I got an email from one of my students who had gotten deployed overseas. A rocket had come into their FOB, blowing up an aircraft full of soldiers. The guys from my class knew what to do and had the skills to respond. It felt good, knowing that I had helped make a difference.
In 2010, I became the first flight medic with this unit, loving a job that got me flying on helicopters, helping people; loving that adrenaline rush. At the age of 45, it was simply the best.
Mitch Watson had been in the military since 1994. Early on, Mitch wanted to be a pilot. He had even enrolled at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, but after doing the math on how much it was going to cost, Mitch’s older brother Jake, a Marine, told him about the Army’s Warrant Officer Flight Training Program. Also being patriotic, Mitch saw this option as a great opportunity to serve his country and become an aviator.
Deployed three times overseas, Mitch’s first deployment was in the late 1990s as an aircraft mechanic assigned to the 101st Airborne Division in support of Operation Southern Watch, Kuwait. His second deployment in 2003 was as a member of the 10th Mountain Division as a pilot flying the UH60L Blackhawk where he spent 13 months in Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Mitch started out as a junior aviator, but flying eight hours a day grew him into his boots fast. His third deployment, still as a member of the 10th Mountain Division flying the UH60L, was in 2006, where he spent a year in Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.
In Afghanistan Mitch got a lot of experience flying in rugged, mountainous terrain, often above 10,000 feet, the most challenging he had ever faced, with the aircraft operating at the very edge of its capable envelope, the margin for error being quite slim. There his unit was supplemented with the Idaho National Guard and, being born and raised in Idaho, he found much in common with his Idaho counterparts.
Returning home and prior to joining the Idaho National Guard, Mitch was assigned to the 12th Aviation Battalion in Fort Belvoir, Virginia, where he flew VIPs in and out of the Pentagon. Once that assignment was up, he managed to get a job in Idaho as an instructor pilot flying the UH 60 Blackhawk and the Army’s newest helicopter, the UH 72 Lakota.
In every region of the world, Mitch has been able to make a small difference in the lives of someone, whether it was bringing emergency supplies to frontline troops, evacuating wounded soldiers and civilians, putting out fires, locating stranded or lost survivors, or like today, helping to hoist injured Americans off a mountainside.
Staff Sergeant Al Colson started with a MEDEVAC unit of the National Guard in August 1992, straight out of high school, during a time when the Guard was running UH1-V/H Iroquois (Huey) helicopters, the kind used in Vietnam.
From early childhood, Al had emergency medical response in his blood. His parents were EMTs who owned their own ambulance company. Lucky guy. Al was the only kid in the neighborhood with his own ambulance to play in. More than once, his parents got calls from the local hospital’s emergency room staff: “Al is out on the radios again.”
Besides search and rescue, Al had substantial talent as a mechanic; he was a guy who could tell you all the inner workings of mechanical assemblies. After three years as a mechanic in the Guard, Al worked into a flying crew chief position on UH1-V Hueys where he did evacuations operations and assisted the medic on board.
As crew chiefs, he and Matt were responsible for the safety of the aircraft and its crew, especially the medic when he is in the field away from the aircraft. Crew chiefs were a second pair of eyes looking over the medic’s shoulder, keeping him safe while he was focused on the patient and not paying attention to what was going on around him.
Deployed to Kuwait for a year, Al is one of the senior people with the Idaho National Guard, having his Airframe and Powerplant mechanics license, an FAA aircraft inspector (IA) license, and even the certification as a military quality control inspector that allows him to inspect other people’s work.
When the Lakota came online, he was the last person still on status who had been on the Huey MEDEVAC unit in the 1990s. With his skill and years of experience, Al was part of the selection committee deciding which enlisted crew members would be selected for the new unit.
Such as Mitch, me, and Matt.
Sergeant Matt Hotvedt, also a crew chief, joined the National Guard right out of high school. Intending to go on to college, he actually never quite made it. Matt got deployed to Kuwait in 2007 and 2008, at the time being a 15T Blackhawk crew chief. While deployed, he was on the crew that shuttled the Deputy Commanding General of the 3rd Army and other VIPs around Kuwait.
Upon returning to the States, he got hired on full-time with the National Guard. Hearing about the LUH (light utility helicopter) unit, knowing it would give him great maintenance experience and the opportunity to get his Airframe and Powerplant license, Matt put his name into the hat and was the youngest of the group chosen, someone from the next generation, a highly skilled individual on board to do a great job.
Nearing the LZ, Dave guided Mitch in. “Hey, we are above you. On the ridge top.” Sure enough. There it was. Next to the big arrow drawn in the mud and snow. Pure Scott and Dave. Always thinking ahead. Pointing the way for the incoming airborne units.
Standing at that LZ, there was no way you could see the crash site itself. Nothing but a sea of trees down below. Taking off our helmets, man, it was cold, wet, and snowy. Made you feel for those people hidden among those trees somewhere.
We first asked Dave, “What is the situation here?”
The assumption on the ground was that we were going to do a hoist. Well, not necessarily. Standard operating procedure was that we were the only qualified people to say if we needed to do a hoist or not. The final call rested with us.
What normally happens is that we usually don’t know whether we are going to do a hoist or not until we actually see the crash site firsthand. Once we arrive, knowing the capabilities of our aircraft, we might locate an acceptable place to land near enough where we can carry the patients to the aircraft instead of hoisting them. So we usually fly over the scene first to evaluate it, but in this particular case, having a face-to-face with Dave, who had been down at the crash site, we knew we were going to do the hoist.
The plan we formulated started with Al and me going down the hill to assess the patients and determine a suitable hoist location. Once we were set, the Lakota would bring the patients up one at a time to the LZ. ASL 3 would transport the first patient. After ASL 3 left the LZ, ALS 2, waiting at Gowen, would lift to get patient #2. After ASL 3 dropped the first patient at Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center, it would refuel and come back to pick up patient #3.
Big logistical circus. But there was a lot of skill and experience on that LZ.
Dave, his shift almost over since he had been on scene since daybreak, would continue to coordinate incoming helicopters until his replacement crew came on duty. With two ASL helicopters and our Lakota, the last thing we wanted was three or four aircraft in the same airspace without coordination. It wasn’t safe or efficient.
While Mitch and Matt continued to powwow with Dave, Al and I, still in flight gear, began to haul medical gear including two SKEDs down the slope. Without our flight gear, required to be hoisted out, we would be guaranteed a walk back up the mountain.
That was when a local guy driving a four-wheel gator, the kind with a cab in the front and a little pickup bed in the back, waved us over. “Come on. I’ll give you a ride down.”
“Sure. Thanks.”
Al jumped in the front. I got in the back. Off we went down the icy, snow-covered mountain going what felt like a hundred miles per hour. We zoomed along a little logging road, no bigger than a path. Trees and branches whacking me, I was glad my helmet was on my head. These local boys were pretty fearless. Skidding to a stop at a hairpin turn, our driver pointed to the ravine. “They are down there.”
Pulling our gear, saying thanks, we made it down the steep slope to the crash site. What I saw next, well, really surprised me.
The place was packed with rescuers. Firefighters. ASL medical crew. Idaho Mountain Search and Rescue. Local residents. Given the information I had en route, I assumed that I was going to be on my own, at least for a while, doing triage and treating those patients who had survived the crash.
What I saw made me very happy. Each of the individuals on the plane, Jayann, Brian, and Heather, had survived the crash. In addition, medical personnel had already given them patient care. The only thing left for us to do was to package the injured patients and get them off the mountain.
And that was why Mitch, Matt, Al, and I had come.
Those already at the crash site, so many being skilled professionals, greeted us as if they had known us for years. “Hey, how are you doing? Glad to meet you. This is what we have got going on.” There was no attitude whatsoever.
For our first live hoist, you couldn’t ask for better people or a finer scenario.
Patient care had been done but, as the flight medic, I still had to assess the patients myself before we made the final decision on the hoist. Would it be safe to lift them that way? Or would it cause them more harm?
While I looked at the family myself and talked with medical personnel, along came the guys from Nampa Fire. Al inspected the surrounding terrain for the safe area to do the hoist. He relayed everything he saw back up the hill to Mitch and Matt, painting a picture for them regarding what to expect. He made a decision on the best location, given trees, obstacles, and how high the aircraft would be. If things went wrong, such as a freak mechanical problem like an engine going out, Mitch would need an escape route, one that would go downhill and out, because he would not have the power to climb back up the mountain to land.
Right off the bat, Al was concerned about that five-foot piece of the wing in the tree. If the Lakota hovered near or over the top of that tree, it could cause that wing portion to fall and hit some of the rescuers. Al also didn’t want the aircraft downhill from the wing. If the wing fell out of the tree, even if it didn’t hit the aircraft, it could act like a metal toboggan on a snowy hillside.
Soon, Al had the spot cleared. I was good with patient assessment. Thumbs-up on the hoist. Heather would be first.
I was glad I had brought a KED (Kendrick Extraction Device), essentially half a spine board with handles, given Heather’s possible pelvic fracture. Because we didn’t have X-ray vision, there was no way of knowing on the mountain the extent of her internal injuries.
Because of her obvious fear, I told her what we were about to do. No surprises. “First we are going to slide this spine board under you and then carry you up a few feet to that SKED. Then we will wrap you up tight like a burrito and carry you over to a clearing.”
In minutes, Nampa firefighters and I had Heather packaged and, with the help of willing volunteers, got her to the hoist area.
A little before noon, we were good to go. “We’re ready,” I radioed to the guys up at the landing zone. Mitch and Matt, on standby, now having grid coordinates, would be overhead in seconds, flying only a half mile to the hoist location, the clearing about 100 meters from the wreck. Al and I had cleared the hoist area of nonessential personnel. I did a quick safety check to make sure that everything was secure, including the tag line, which Al would navigate. Fortunately the wind was coming up the mountain, preserving Mitch’s escape route.
Given the obstacles and variables here, he would probably fly around 120 feet, which, on the Lakota, was the height where the impact from the downwash was a lot less. In addition, the higher the helicopter, the more difficult the hoist. Up higher, you have cues when the aircraft is drifting but don’t catch the drift as quickly. Nearer to the ground, rotor wash blows stuff everywhere and you risk damaging things or, if there are open wounds, blowing sand and dust into injuries.
We train to get the hoist hook within five feet of the patient, but today there was a lot of wind and the terrain was steep. The challenge for Mitch and Matt would be to hover at the best height while getting that hook within five feet of us.
Neither Al nor I doubted that they would. Mitch was an outstanding pilot; Matt exceptional as a hoist operator and crew chief. When I have been on the hoist, they have been able to put me down right where I needed to go, gentle as you could imagine. On the ground, I rarely have to chase the hook around because they often put it right into my hand.
What they were about to do was an amazing feat of coordination. Something equivalent to driving a car with your eyes closed while another person told you how to steer.
Our helmets on, Al and I could hear everything that Mitch and Matt were saying.
Mitch, taking off from the LZ, knowing the grid coordinates and looking for the crash site hidden in the trees, said, “Crash scene coming up in a half mile. Crash scene coming up in a quarter of a mile at 12:00 o’clock. I see the crash scene. It’s 12:00 o’clock. A thousand yards.”
Seeing the crash site, Mitch slowed down the Lakota but continued to fly toward it. At some point, Mitch would lose his visual on the crash site because, sitting in the front of the helicopter, his windows look forward, like in a car. He could not see directly beneath the aircraft.
In the transition stage where Mitch loses sight of the crash site, Matt, the crew chief, becomes the eyes of the aircraft. Matt began directing Mitch by saying, “Okay. I have the crash site. Keep coming forward. Keep coming forward—ten, five, four, three, two, one. Hold—hover.”
Standing on the skids, Matt was judging where to hover given where we were on the ground. We were on a slope of the mountain, a good place that Al had found, one that minimized the risk of the wing stuck in the tree coming out. Similarly, hovering, Mitch was doing his own analysis, agreeing it was a good spot, pointing the nose into the wind.
SOP required Matt to speak every five seconds but, in all practicality, Matt talked the whole time, painting a picture for Mitch. “I need you slide right. Three, two, one. Hold—hover. Come down. Three, two, one. Hold—hover.” Mitch made these very small and delicate movements to get the Lakota into the perfect position, so when Matt dropped the hook, it went right into our hands.
Matt was attached to the aircraft by a “monkey harness,” or tether, a nylon strap that connected to the back of the flight vest and secured him to the helicopter. Another reason for Matt to keep talking was that it was one of the few ways Mitch would know that Matt was still on the Lakota’s skids, that he had not fallen down or for some reason lost comm, such as bumping his helmet or having his wires come unplugged.
So, as Matt kept talking, he was essentially flying the helicopter through Mitch. Together, it was a mastery of coordination.
After only seconds, Matt was in a good position. He said, “Aircraft is in a good position. Set.” Mitch, having his references, being also in a good position and with enough power, answered, “Set.”
Matt responded with “Roger. Deploying cable. Hook is five feet below the aircraft. Quarter of the way down. Hook is ten feet from the ground. Five, four, three, two, one. Hook is on the ground. Medic has the hook.”
In seconds, I had the hook in my hands and got Heather’s SKED attached. Because she was medically stable, I didn’t need to go up with her. “Ready?” I asked her, knowing this was about the last thing she wanted to do.
“Would you pull my knit cap down? I don’t want to see.”
“You bet.” Double-checking everything, this gal was good to go.
Matt kept apprising Mitch of every detail. “Medic is hooking up the SKED. Medic has hooked up the SKED. Reeling in cable. Cable is taut. Clear to come up ten feet.”
To confirm that the helicopter had enough power to lift the load, Mitch flew the Lakota up ten feet. In his preflight, Mitch had made a rough estimate of the weight of patients being 250 pounds or less. Not knowing for certain what each person weighed, once they were on the hook, Mitch had to make sure that they would not overload the helicopter. Those first ten feet, checking his gauges and making sure everything was within limits, Mitch was making sure that the helicopter could do the lift.
We heard Mitch say, “Power good. Continue hoist.”
“Roger, “Matt responded. “Power good. Continuing hoist.”
Now, all along, Mitch had a stopwatch going given the amount of power the Lakota was expending. Five minutes of using that much power, hovering at that altitude under these conditions with that amount of weight, and the Lakota’s engines would work hard to keep the helicopter from descending, something similar to redlining a car. If we used that level of power longer than five minutes, the aircraft could get damaged. At a minimum, it would have to go through an extensive inspection.
On the Lakota’s skids, Matt was doing many things at once. He was watching both down and around, making sure the aircraft did not drift into the trees that were 20 to 30 yards behind its tail. One of his hands was on the pendant, which allowed him to control the hoist and activate the trigger used to talk. His other hand was holding on to the helicopter because he didn’t want to have to use his monkey harness. His third task was to get Heather into the aircraft.
As the cable retracted, Matt used his feet, hands, and body to keep it from swinging, even leaning on it. As Heather neared the helicopter, though, her body was perpendicular to the skids. What he needed was her SKED parallel to the skids in order to get her up and over them without them hitting her head. At ground level, we were letting out the tag line to help but, given the mud, snow, and slope, it wasn’t working too well.
We had two options. Move us on the ground in a radial manner, out to the 3 o’clock or 6 o’clock position to make her parallel. Or have Mitch slide the aircraft. Every situation was different. If those of us on the ground had been more mobile, we might have used the tag line to move the SKED but Al, seeing what was going on said to Mitch, “Pivot the helicopter to the right 45 degrees.”
“Roger.”
When Mitch did, Heather stayed still but the helicopter moved just the perfect amount to hoist her right past the skids. Getting into the aircraft, Matt pulled Heather inside while lowering the cable to give himself some slack.
Start to finish, the hoist took about three minutes. You would have thought we did this kind of thing all day long.
Down below, we were on constant alert for what was happening overhead and around us. There were a lot of people at the location. Firefighters. EMS. You name it. The last thing we wanted was someone getting hurt by our aircraft. And, given the wind, it wouldn’t take much for a branch to break off, hit someone, or get blown up into the aircraft. A lot of distractions. A lot going on.
But our first live hoist went very well.
After dropping Heather off at the LZ, the four of us regrouped over the radio. Because Matt had to do a lot in the last sequence, and because of the number of medical personnel on the ground coupled with the fact that we had patient stabilization and seasoned firefighters who could do patient packaging in their sleep, we decided to have me inside the Lakota to help out Matt. Because we had two more patients who might be more difficult than Heather to get into the aircraft, it made sense for me to be in the Lakota. Once the SKED got to the cabin door, I would pull the patient inside, allowing Matt to stay outside managing the cable.
“Hey, Mitch,” Al radioed, “do you have power capable of getting Rob on the aircraft?”
Mitch did. Okay. Up I went on the hoist. Smooth as silk.
Jayann, our next patient, was packaged and ready. In less than three minutes, we had her hoisted and in the Lakota. As we flew to the LZ, I looked at Jayann, seeing she seemed to be in pain. I asked, “Are you okay?” She kept nodding that she was fine, a grateful smile on her face. What a lady.
Truth was that we all wanted to get Jayann to the hospital as soon as possible because she had lost consciousness during the crash. It was a matter of concern for a medic like me because you could not know what is going on inside. When someone lost consciousness because of a bump to the head, as far as we were concerned, it warranted an automatic trip to the emergency room.
Reaching the LZ in literally seconds, we handed Jayann to the waiting Air St. Luke’s crew. She was quickly transferred and on her way to the hospital with ASL once again doing an outstanding job.
You had to hand it to them. Most HEMS companies would not dispatch three or more aircraft to accomplish a mission like this one, given the expense, personnel, and risk involved.
But Air St. Luke’s had. They had been willing to go that extra mile.
A little past 1:00 p.m. One more hoist.
Down at the crash site, given the amount of snow falling, Al was beginning to wonder if we were going to get snowed in or maybe if the Lakota would have to leave to keep it from getting stuck on top of the mountain.
We were definitely seeing the worst of it. Snow. Lower visibility. And the Lakota was not an all-weather machine. It could fly in the clouds, but it didn’t have any kind of anti-icing equipment. Our job was to avoid those kinds of conditions.
Besides weather, our fuel was another factor. With the first two hoists, we had burned a lot of fuel. The Lakota was now lighter, which was an advantage given that we would now be lifting our heaviest patient. However, Mitch made it clear, “We have to get going because fuel is about to be an issue.”
Thinking the same, Al radioed, “Mitch, how are you with fuel? Do you have enough to do another lift?” Al wanted to make sure that we had enough fuel to get the Lakota off that LZ if the weather really pushed the issue of us staying.
“We’re fine,” Mitch responded. “Be ready for the last lift. We don’t have a lot of time.”
Thankfully, Nampa Fire had packaged Brian in one of their SKEDs and, with the many other responders, had carried Brian to the hoist site. There, Al did some on-the-spot tag line training with the firefighters, which allowed him to hook Brian to the hook himself. He checked everything, something we do quickly, probably two or three times just to make sure it is done right, and soon Brian was on his way out of the ravine.
Although he had a head injury, Brian, like his wife and daughter, was doing remarkably well. As we were flying back to the LZ, I talked to him as best I could, asking, “How are you doing? Are you hurting anywhere?”
He just smiled and said, “Thank you.”
At the LZ, we powered down while waiting for the returning Air St. Luke’s helicopter that was dealing with 41-knot headwinds. Matt closed the back of the clamshell and, for a few minutes, the three of us talked with Brian, hearing firsthand the story about the crash and how they survived through calling 911. Hearing some amazing parts of his story, I said, “God saved this family.”
By 15:30:00, less than eight hours start to finish, Mitch, Matt, Al, and I were on our way home—tired but feeling really good.
“You know, guys,” I said over the radio, “I have done a lot of stuff in the Army—a lot of good things—but I think I am probably as proud as I have ever been because we made a huge difference in the lives of those people today.”
The response was the same all around.
We were on cloud nine, talking all the way back to Boise airspace. Our first live hoist mission had turned out great. We had accomplished something that mattered, doing the job we were trained to do.
I had no doubt that the Lord was smiling on that family. The way things worked out, the way the plane crashed, the fact they were able to get cell coverage, and how we had just gotten certified to do a hoist had set this rescue apart. This family had something left to do on this earth.
Commander Brian Fox greeted us as we landed at Gowen, even taking a picture of the four of us, with plenty of high fives all around. Later, Lieutenant Colonel Shields told us, “Good job, guys.”
I had to say it, “The Lord was looking out for them, no doubt about it.” Without skipping a beat, Mitch agreed, “He sure was.”
From left to right: Sergeant Matt Hotvedt, Staff Sergeant Robert Toronto, CW3 Mitchell Watson, Staff Sergeant Al Colson