Air Ambulance Sees In The Dark
Night Vision Goggles Guide Air Evac Pilots
Monday, November 30, 2009
Tim Collins, a flight medic with Air Evac Lifeteam in Springdale, demonstrates Saturday the new night vision goggles the crew uses to navigate to emergency scenes. The goggles attach to the flight helmet and are used to navigate in darkness.
Photo by J.S. WEDGEWORTH
SPRINGDALE — There’s a sense of urgency every time Andy Anderson goes barreling through the night, but now, he’s running in nearly daylight conditions.
The $11,000 night vision goggles clipped to Anderson’s helmet help him navigate his Bell 206 helicopter around trees, power lines, airplanes and other hazards, and find landing zones in sometimes rural, challenging terrain.
Anderson’s ability to see in the dark is good news for those on the ground, because his chopper is an airborne ambulance.
“It used to be we’d hover down to about 200 feet, turn on the landing lights and depend on the firefighters on the ground to mark fences and power lines for us while we looked for a safe spot,” said Anderson, chief pilot for Air Evac 4. “Now, we can see it all.”
The night vision goggles are part of Air Evac Lifeteam’s push to modernize helicopter medical transport. A rash of air ambulance crashes around the country prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to rewrite rules for air ambulances, but Springdale-based Air Evac 4 is ahead of the curve, said program director Rod Wasson.
“The night-vision is going to be standard protocol in a year or two, but we got our first set in July,” he said.
Anderson has been around Bell 206s and their UH-1 Huey military cousin since the late 1960s. He wondered whether night vision would live up to the hype until he experimented one night flying back from Springfield, Mo.
“With the goggles, I could see dozens of aircraft in my field of vision. When I took them off, I could only see one plane,” he said. “If I’d known they were this good, I’d have bought my own a long time ago.”
An air ambulance equipped with night vision helps first responders on the ground focus on the medical situation at hand, rather than on the incoming helicopter, said John Luther, director of emergency management for Washington County.
“We don’t need people moving trucks, lighting fence lines, or whatever else the helicopter needs, and that’s more help for whatever we’ve got happening on the ground,” Luther said. “We can dedicate one person to coordinate with the chopper, and it’s in, no problem.”
In addition to the goggles clipped to pilots’ helmets, flight nurses and paramedics also have goggles or monoculars. The vision systems, along with necessary modifications to the helicopter, drive the cost of seeing in the dark to about $30,000 per crew, Wasson said.
When first responders call for air support anywhere in Northwest Arkansas, it’s almost always Anderson or one of his colleagues spooling up the rotor blades. Competing air ambulance company EagleMed still answers calls in the region from bases in Tahlequah, Okla., or Joplin, Mo., if needed, but no longer bases a helicopter in Bentonville, said Shalia Rupp, public relations specialist for EagleMed.
Air Evac splits duty, running about half emergency calls and half hospital-to-hospital transfers, Wasson said.
About 40 percent of emergency calls result in a pickup, while the rest are called off, Anderson said.
“We’re burning about 35 gallons of jet fuel an hour, and a lot of times we launch and then they don’t need us,” Anderson said. “Still, I’d rather bore a hole in the sky for no reason than wait too long and arrive five minutes too late to help someone.”
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