NEWELL—If you wondered what the heck a helicopter was doing flying around the town of Newell a few weeks ago, you were not alone! Black Hills Life Flight was here on a training mission with the area’s first responders on July 21 at the Newell Ambulance Hall.
Circling town is part of their landing protocol. “So people may have noticed they circled the town—they circled the town twice, up high and then down low—and the reason for that, they said that’s standard procedure, because they are looking at obstacles that we can’t see,” explained Sherry Hocking, Newell Ambulance Director.
Black Hills Life Flight agreed to fly in for the local training. They were scheduled to land about a block away from the Ambulance Hall, in the open city lot. “Black Hills Life Flight agreed to come up and do our training for us…the crew was going to come up with the helicopter. The guy that was doing the classroom training took a walk with a few of the crew members and they went over and looked at the lot and came back,” shared Hocking. “The instructor said, ‘Let’s just put her down right here between the fire hall and the ambulance hall’ and so that was their decision, and they did it.”
Yep, that is right! The helicopter landed right in town, on the street in front of the Ambulance Hall. “They recommend 100 by 100 landing zone, but you can do it much smaller and so we blocked off the road at Girard, and then right beyond the ambulance hall—so that nobody could drive in there, and that’s where they dropped that bird down,” said Hocking.
And when a helicopter circles the town and lands right on the street, folks want to know what is happening. There was quite a gathering in downtown Newell with the rescue workers that were in training along with the curious community. “We had 25 to 30 people there—firefighters and ambulance personnel. And then we had a lot of people that came out, they were intrigued and they came to look and they had questions,” said Hocking. “It was like the whole town—we had a lot of people. We had looky-loos all over the place—they drive by and then they turn around and drive back—like that’s a helicopter!”
When the helicopter landed on the street, it was very convenient for those in training, but it was also very windy! “Well, we all got sandblasted because you know when that bird comes down, there’s a lot of force with those rotors—they turn so fast. And I mean, dust, you were covering your face, and we were such close proximity to it. If we’re out on the highway or in a field, the helicopter will land a little bit away from us,” explained Hocking.
It was quite a sight to see the helicopter landing in town, but it was for a very important reason. All of the emergency personnel need to know how to set up a landing zone, what information to gather for the crew flying in and all of the rules that go along with bringing a patient to the Life Flight. Hocking said, “We had a good representation from all fire departments. We had a dispatcher here because it takes a coordinated effort to land that helicopter, you know, take care of the patient, make sure everybody’s safe, and it takes all of us.”
The training gave the participants a chance to interact directly with the Life Flight crew and learn all of the information that they needed to gather when asking the Life Flight crew to come pick up a patient.
The first responders were also reminded of the safety precautions they needed to follow when approaching a Life Flight helicopter. “There are a lot of instructions before you can go near that helicopter. Like you can’t be anywhere near the back of it, you can’t be anywhere near the tail of a helicopter—they say no loose clothing, no hats, nothing that would fly off that would ground them—because if something like a hat flies off your head and it hits the rotor, it grounds them,” explained Hocking.
Hocking hopes that all of those present at the training will go back to their fire departments and share all the information they learned. “It was very good training. I think we started at 7 p.m. in the classroom, took a break at 7:30 p.m. and went out to the helicopter. They were probably at that helicopter I would say half an hour to 45 minutes, and then we came back into the classroom. We didn’t get done till a little after 9 o’clock. Everybody said they thought it was excellent training,” said Hocking.
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