We went to a special training event on Saturday for our Sequim Community Emergency Response Training (CERT) group. CERT is our community effort to prepare for large scale disasters such as a major earthquake. Saturday’s program was an all-day event designed to enhance our monthly training meetings. It included a visit by a helicopter and crew from Life Flight Network, a new local emergency transport service. CERT members had training sessions designed to facilitate landing and loading of emergency helicopters.
Minutes matter in an emergency and the first hour can mean life or death. Although we have a local hospital, as I showed you yesterday, it is not equipped to handle serious injuries. Serious trauma, or level 1 emergencies, require specialized intervention such as orthopedic or neurosurgery, and high level critical care. In these cases patients are referred to larger hospitals in Seattle, a road trip that could take a couple of hours plus a ferry trip. That’s where this helicopter comes in. Its pilot is shown above.
Life Flights provides an air ambulance by helicopter that includes two skilled nurses to transport patients to a Seattle trauma center in as little as 10 minutes. They base a helicopter at an airport in Port Angeles for fast local response.
This is a small, nimble craft designed to get the job done. But it doesn’t come cheap. A trip in one of these babies can cost from $10,000 to $25,000 a flight. It may or may not be covered by health insurance. Life Flight offers yearly family memberships at a reasonable cost. It looks like a good idea for locals who want to cover all the “just in case” bases.