Oh, look.....propaganda!

[Stephen Richey]

 Hubris is great ain't it?
===============================
Medical Helicopter Crash Unlikely Here, Officials Say

<http://ads.mgnetwork.com/RealMedia/ads/click_nx.ads/www.tbo.com/news/story.htm@Right1?x>By
KEITH MORELLI <kmorelli at tampatrib.com> | The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 2, 2008

TAMPA - The crash last weekend of two medical helicopters in Arizona that
killed six people is unlikely to happen here because of all the precautions
in place, said an Aeromed manager who oversees the landing and taking off of
air ambulances at Tampa General Hospital.

On any given day, helicopters can be seen hovering throughout the skies of
Tampa. There are news helicopters, law enforcement helicopters, privately
owned helicopters and the medical helicopters, which are shuttling patients
with medical emergencies to hospitals.

John Scott manages the Aeromed program at Tampa General, where such
helicopters frequently.

"We have lots of helicopters that land here," he said today. "We have all
kinds of sophisticated systems in place here."

There is Tampa International Airport nearby, which has a handle on every
aircraft in the area, he said. Plus the hospital itself has a mini control
tower which coordinates flights in and out of the hospital's landing zone.

Communications frequencies are well-known among approaching pilots, he said.
Redundancies in protocol mean a safer sky over the large hospital on Davis
Islands, he said.

He said he didn't know what happened in Arizona on Sunday, but, "I can say
that I feel very comfortable with what we've got here, which are a lot of
systems in place. We're vested in safety."

Tampa General has three helicopters of its own. One is stationed at the
hospital, while the others are in Sebring and Inverness. He couldn't say how
many times a helicopter lands at Tampa General.

"Some days, it's all day long," he said. "Some days it doesn't even happen."

On Sunday, a helicopter taking a patient with a medical emergency from the
Grand Canyon collided into another medical helicopter carrying a patient
near a northern Arizona hospital. The crash killed six people and critically
injured a nurse.

The collision Sunday, east of Flagstaff Medical Center, barely missed a
neighborhood, sparing the community from falling debris.

An explosion on one of the helicopters after the crash injured two emergency
workers who arrived with a ground ambulance company. They suffered minor
burns and were taken to a hospital.

A medical helicopter did crash in the Bay area eight years ago, killing the
pilot and two crew members aboard. The aircraft was not transporting
patients at the time. The crash occurred near Weedon Island in Pinellas
County.

A subsequent federal investigation concluded that the Bayflite helicopter
was flying too low and attributed the crash to the pilot, 39-year-old Mark
Wallace.

Wallace had logged 4,367 flight hours and was at the controls of the
Eurocopter BK117 as it flew from Bayfront Medical Center in St. Petersburg
to St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa. The day was clear with a visibility of 10
miles, but the chopper flew into a 649-foot radio tower near Weedon Island
and plummeted to the ground.

Paramedic Erik Hangartner, 29, and flight nurse Alicia Betita-Collins, 51,
died.

Reporter Keith Morelli can be reached at (813) 259-7760 or
kmorelli at tampatrib.com.


-- 
Stephen L. Richey, CRT
Aviation Injury Research Project Leader
Saginaw Valley State University
Phone: 248-366-4452