Helicopter crashes atop hospital
I've managed to avoid the subject of medevac helicopters and their dangers for well over a year, but yesterday one crashed atop a hospital in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan. It was the same sort of incident that occurred atop Pinnacle Hospital just north of my Shipoke neighborhood in Harrisburg, Pa., in November 2006, but with worse results. The $11.1 million helicopter took off from Spectrum/Butterworth Hospital, where my mother worked decades ago, and immediately crashed back to the roof, bursting into flames. Thankfully no one was killed--it was a miracle--but the top three floors of the hospital had to be evacuated.
Here's the money quote from the Grand Rapids Press story: "We could see debris flying everywhere. I could see the blades flying off. The boom shook our entire room. Then we knew something horrible had happened." You can read the rest of the Press coverage by going to this link. Now imagine pieces of helicopter blade slicing through walkers in Riverfront Park or crashing into cars stopped at the busy Second and Chestnut intersection after another crash atop Pinnacle.
The Press also provides statistics on medevac helicopter crashes from the National Transportation Safety Board: between 1998-2005, there were 89 medevac helicopter crashes that resulted in 75 deaths.
I got interested in the medevac helicopter issue out of personal annoyance--the noise of helicopters landing at Pinnacle that wakes us up at 2 a.m.--but stayed with it because of the safety issue. STAT-Medevac and other medical helicopters continue to fly over my neighborhood out of convenience instead of doing the safe thing, coming up the Susquehanna River and then making a 100 yard turn to land on the hospital roof. I stress again that unless Pinnacle officials lied to the FAA in their initial application, these aren't road accident victims coming in for emergency treatment. They are routine transfers of patients who need types of surgery their own little local hospitals can't offer. There is no reason the helicopters couldn't land at Capital City Airport in New Cumberland and meet ambulances for the remaining three mile journey.
But it's a prestige thing for Pinnacle. Important downtown hospitals have rooftop helipads. Unimportant ones don't. There needs to be strict federal government oversight of these operations to prevent tragedies. I don't want my next 2 a.m. wake-up call to be a frantic order to run because one of the helicopters on the way to Pinnacle has crashed into a row of homes in Shipoke and set the neighborhood on fire.