By Dave Herndon, The News Herald
ALLEN PARK — Firefighters from both Allen Park and Melvindale gathered in the parking lot of the Southfield Lease Properties Wednesday for training with the Survival Flight crew from the University of Michigan Medical Center.“It was a great training opportunity,” Melvindale Fire Chief Steven Densmore said. “Having a helicopter land on the scene is a pretty unique situation.”
Densmore said that the training was especially necessary because the hospital has recently purchased two new helicopters with a third one on the way soon.
“The landing zone is different for every size and weight chopper,” he said. “So it was good to get the training with the new equipment.”
The new helicopters that the hospital purchased are Eurocopter’s with twin turbine engines. They are capable of getting from Ann Arbor to any scene Downriver in about 20 minutes. The time includes the preflight checks and loading any special equipment that is needed for a specific call.
The class that the crew taught to the local firefighters was specifically about how to set-up a landing zone and the basics of where to be while the helicopter is landing.
“They had to show us what to do to help them land,” Allen Park Fire Chief Doug LaFond said. “They showed us where we could be, and where we shouldn’t be to avoid being in the pilot’s blind spots when he is landing.”
LaFond said that the Survival Flight crews are not needed often, but in the case of a “mass casualty” situation or a major burn victim would trigger calling them in. A mass casualty event would be something like a major car crash with multiple critical patients.
According to LaFond in that situation local ambulances would take patients to hospitals like Detroit Receiving or Oakwood Hospital and Medical Center, while the Survival Flight crews would take patients to hospitals farther away to “spread the load,” and not overwhelm any one hospital.
Another reason that a helicopter crew might be called in would depend on traffic flow and time of day. LaFond said that during a rush hour accident it might be more effective to call in the Survival Flight rather than try to traverse rush hour traffic.
“With a critical patient there are often as many as 10 staff members used to care for them,” he said. “So we don’t like to take to many patients to the same hospital all at once.”
The Survival Flight helicopters are staffed with a pilot, most of which have military flight training backgrounds, and two flight nurses that have been cross trained as paramedics that can give emergency care during transport.
University of Michigan Hospital has bee providing Survival Flight services since 1983.
The crew is expected back later this summer for a second training class for the rest of the Allen Park department, as well as members of other departments that will be invited.
Story, Video, Photos: http://www.thenewsherald.com
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