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This chapter is an insight into air medical crews’ vision of themselves with the public, something we all cared deeply about. There’s also an element of humor in the circumstances as they unfold.
CHAPTER TEN – THE PUBLIC SHOWS THEY CARE
Cost cutting measures that added to our personal danger and long flights into harsh territory made life hard for medevac crews. In the face of all that we needed to believe in what we were doing; otherwise how could we carry on? The public had always given us a lot of support. People we came into contact with at, say a grocery store on our way to work looked at us in our flight suits with the same level of respect they gave police officers and fire fighters. I’ve never forgotten those casual but positive encounters.
On one summer afternoon in Michigan, in 1992, I would find myself in a place we’d never planned to be, asking for help from people who’d never had a helicopter parked in their midst.
We received a call to a hospital thirty miles west of us, where a patient needed to be flown to another facility for a special procedure. A big thunderstorm was moving in from the west, so we had only a small window to get there, load the patient and get out before the weather closed in.
I landed the 412 in a parking lot next to the ER, the sky to the west a dark wall of heavy rain. I went with the crew to help package the patient and get him out to the helicopter, hoping to speed the process. The rain suddenly arrived, drenching us as we loaded the patient. I picked the helicopter up to a hover and turned it around to the west, to take off into the wind, but wind and rain lashed the parking lot and we couldn’t see more than a few blocks. We weren’t going anywhere.
I set back down and told the crew we couldn’t take off. They asked me to call an ambulance. I called our dispatch, told them we were weathered in and asked for one. Within minutes, it pulled up next to the aircraft. The med crew quickly transferred the patient and drove off into the squall.
I was left with the problem of how to get home. The rain pounded on the 412’s roof and sheets of water cascaded down the windshield. I’d get stuck here for the night if I didn’t do something, the base would be out of service and I would end up sleeping in the hospital lobby.
The cloud ceiling was 400 or 500 feet. I could fly slowly beneath it, watching for trees and wires. The murk below the clouds swirled around, ragged patches of rain and mist, with visibility up and down, from a few hundred yards to a couple of miles, the latter more than adequate for us to fly in. Rather than try and navigate the trackless open country on a direct route back to base, if I flew south a few miles I could pick up the interstate and follow it all the way home.
That kind of flying is called scud running. Flying over the trees as low as a hundred feet, I would keep an eye on the ground while picking my way through the rain. If the visibility began to close in I could slow down and then, if it closed in, pick out a flat spot and set the helicopter down until the visibility improved. I’d done my share of it over the years, and ended up spending an unplanned night in small towns here and there when it closed in around me.
Light plane pilots try this sometimes when they’ve flown into weather they weren’t prepared for, descending lower and lower trying to stay in visual contact with the ground. The problem for them is, unlike helicopters, they can’t slow down below a minimum flight speed. Too often they get trapped and end up crashing.
We would never scud run with a med crew aboard. They’d be frightened as the clouds misted by the windows. But with them having departed the scene it was the right thing to do to get the helicopter back to base.
I started the engines, lifted off and called dispatch, telling them the weather had gotten better and I was headed home. I didn’t bother them with details of my plans to tree-hop along the way. Turning south I flew at about 60 knots over a flat stretch of forest, slow enough to avoid obstacles. A few minutes later, I spotted an overpass over the interstate and turned east, homeward bound.
A big set of power lines ran parallel to the freeway. Watching the fifty-foot-high towers out ahead gave me a good measure of the visibility. As long as I could see two of them I could keep flying.
I thundered down the median of the interstate making eye contact with truck drivers. Having learned to fly helicopters in Southern California, where we were conditioned not to fly low and upset people I wasn’t really comfortable with this. Yet here I was in an 11,000-lb. helicopter with large letters on the side spelling out our program name, in the middle of traffic. Would someone call in and complain?
Legally I was within FAA Regulations for helicopters, but how about the drivers just below me? That didn’t seem to be a problem, though, quite the opposite. Truck drivers smiled and waved. I waved back as they passed me going faster than I was.
Then suddenly, the clouds came down and the next power line tower faded into the murk.
I needed to land.
There, ahead of me was an off-ramp with a gas station and a good size parking lot, a perfect spot for me to park until the clouds blew by. I turned off the interstate toward the lot but then, out of the corner of my eye I saw a large piece of tin from the roof of a building flapping around as my rotor wash hit it. If it came loose it could tear into the rotor blades and turn us into a whirling mass of deadly metal. I pulled up and away and scanned around for another landing spot.
Across the freeway was an open vacant lot. I headed for it and landed about fifty yards away from the road. Ten minutes later the power line towers appeared again and I resumed my journey. It went well for the next few miles but now I was in a bad way on fuel. The helicopter burned as much fuel flying at 40 knots as it did at 120 but you weren’t making the miles. Darkness, crappy visibility and marginal fuel were a bad mix. I wasn’t going to make it back.
Up ahead I saw lights at another off-ramp. Among them was a Bob’s Big Boy restaurant and it had a parking lot big enough for trucks - plenty of room for a 412.
I came in slowly, watching for wires, a noisy airborne monster from out of nowhere. The rotor wash blew water in sheets across the surface, spraying over nearby cars and trucks like a minor hurricane.
Once I was on the ground I tried to call dispatch, but there was no signal. I shut the engines down and pulled on the rotor brake to stop the rotors as quickly as possible. Curious on-lookers could start walking toward the helo and get hurt. It was raining steadily. People inside Bob’s Big Boy were staring out at the big, noisy machine that had descended out of the sky.
This was before cell phones, so I needed a land line to report in. Climbing down from the helicopter I walked across the rain-soaked lot, stepping around the deeper puddles in a vain attempt to keep my boots dry. The lobby was jammed with people happy to be out of the rain, their chatter a warm hum as they waited in line for food and tables. And here I was making an unavoidable grand entrance while leaving a trail of water across the floor.
Everyone smiled at me, all the while staring in wonder, as if I was an astronaut. The flight suit did it, that and the gold wings, unit patches and a large American flag on my shoulder. I’ve never liked being the center of attention but, as I made my way toward the counter, the line moved aside for me, people staring at me in wonder.
“I’m not cutting in line, folks, just need to get to a phone,” I said.
“Hi, guys,” I said, arriving at the counter. “Sorry for blowing water all over the place, but I’m weathered in here. Could I use your phone, please, to let my people know where I am?”
One of the burger guys flipped up the counter gate and waved me through. “Help yourself,” he said. “And when you’re done, we’ll fix you a burger, on the house.”
His eyes wrinkled in a smile. His brow was covered in sweat from the heat of the stove full of burgers, his apron streaked with ketchup and grease stains. He pointed me at a small office and pushed me gently toward it. What a great guy out here far from town, deep in the kitchen of a burger joint.
I followed his nudges, found the phone and called home.
“Where are you?” Joan, the dispatcher said. “We were worried.”
“I’m in the parking lot of a Bob’s Big Boy west of town,” I said. “Safe landing and everything’s fine, just ran out of daylight and gas, and had to stop.”
“He’s OK,” I heard Joan say over her shoulder, probably to the crew fretting about me. “What do you need, Woody?”
“Can you have Jim bring me some fuel. And you might as well bring Don out here and let him take over.” Don was the night pilot. I was already officially off duty.
“OK, I’ll get them on their way. Is there a number where I can call you?”
I gave her the number on the phone then thanked her and hung up. Heading back into the kitchen I found a corner where I was out of the way so I could hang around and wait for a call back.
“What can we get you?” my new friend asked, holding up a partially assembled burger as he spoke.
“Well, I need to wait for them to call back. Is it OK if I just hang out here? I’ll stay out of the way.”
“Hell, yeah,” he said. “Look at that crowd out there,” he pointed at the now jammed lobby. “You’re good for business, Captain. How about that burger?”
I didn’t feel right taking free food. These guys had already been so kind. Sitting in their office eating their food seemed terribly crass.
“You know, maybe a cup of coffee?”
He slapped the burger on a bun then poured a coffee and handed it to me.
“The office is yours,” he said.
I smiled and thanked him, looking over his shoulder at the crowd, all pointing at me and talking to each other. I thought about that classic flying movie, The Great Waldo Pepper, with Robert Redford as a traveling stunt pilot. I hadn’t ever planned to play that role but, like Waldo I had flown in and landed among nice local folks and they thought it was a big deal. Waldo made the most of the attention. For me, the sooner Jim and Don arrived and I could hand this side show over to them, the better.
Joan called back. Jim and Don would arrive in forty-five minutes. I stepped out of the office, thanked my host for his hospitality and asked if there was a back door I could use to avoid the crowd. He escorted me to the door and waved to me as I walked back across the parking lot, hugging myself tightly against the wet chill.
I sat in the helicopter as rain pounded on the roof. Cars pulled into the parking lot, then stopped as the occupants stared at the helicopter.
Jim drove in a little while later. He seemed distracted, his brown hair tossed into a bird’s nest, his work clothes looking like he’d slept in them. His normal work day was from seven AM to four PM and his wife was known to raise a fuss when he didn’t get home on time, as happened now and then. My dragging him out here was probably going to cause him some misery when he got home, poor guy.
Don stepped out of Jim’s truck and walked purposefully over to the helicopter, not stopping to acknowledge me. A former Army pilot who flew in Vietnam, his white hair stuck out in puffs from underneath his company cap, his mustache twitching with his irritation at the truck ride into the countryside.
He climbed up the side of the 412 and poked at the rotor system, checking for any damage I might’ve caused. Not finding anything, he climbed down and walked around the aircraft, then came back to the truck.
“So, you couldn’t find your way the last ten minutes?” Don asked. He was a generally a decent guy to work with but he had a gruff streak.
“Staring at 100 lbs. of fuel, thought I should stop,” I replied. “I’m too new to the 412 to chance an engine-out landing in the middle of town at night.”
He grunted a reply and turned to help Jim take the gas cans out of the truck. We poured the fuel into the helicopter, much of it dribbling out onto the parking lot, making an oily, wet mess. Enough of the fuel made it into the tanks that there was plenty for the flight home. The rest was diluted by the rain so there’d be no fire hazard.
I told him he could get all the free food he wanted from Bob’s Big Boy. He shook his head and pointed at his sack lunch.
“I won’t be here that long,” he replied. “Soon as this weather lifts a bit I’ll be heading back to base, finish what you started.”
I smiled and said I’d see him in the morning.
Jim and I rode back to the base, pretty much in silence, him preoccupied, I suspected, with the chewing out that awaited him when he got home. When we arrived at the hospital I got out of the truck.
“Sorry for the mess I caused you, Jim,” I said. “Hope it doesn’t upset your evening at home too much.”
“Nah, it’ll be OK,” he replied. “See you tomorrow.”
When I reported in the next morning Don hadn’t made it home and Jim had to drive me back out to Bob’s Big Boy to relieve him. I got out of the truck as Don staggered down out of the 412 cabin. He’d spent the night in the litter and looked like hell, his face puffy from lack of sleep.
“Hi, Don, rough night it looks like.” I said.
He scowled at me, walked over to Jim’s truck and slammed the door as he got in. Jim did a quick walkaround of the 412.
“You need anything else, Woody?” he asked.
“Nope, I’m good Jim. Thanks for all your help with this mess. And sorry again for putting you out.”
“It’s fine, Woody, better you landed safe than push into something you weren’t sure of. See you back at the base,” he said, smiling, then got in the truck and drove away.
I’ve never forgotten all the nice people I met that day, from the truck drivers waving as I thundered down the interstate to the crowd at Bob’s Big Boy and that manager who took me into his workplace and couldn’t do enough for me.
Would the public’s reaction have been the same if I hadn’t been in a flight suit with gold wings on my chest and a medical patch on my sleeve?
I made a point of passing the story around to the other pilots and the med crew, letting them know that out there, in this instance, people thought we were special.
This was a good experience to put away for the next time I thought about how much more money I could make flying jets. Thinking back to my days as a cop and the promise I made to myself when I left police work, the admiration of the folks at Bob’s Big Boy told it all: medevac flying was all about that high standard I’d committed to.
Copyright © 2021 Woody McClendon. All rights reserved.
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