Things don’t always go exactly as planned.
This is a pretty standard observation—hope for the best and prepare for the worst, right?
However, there’s a fine line between being oblivious to potential danger and being straight up paranoid.
Disaster crews are well-equipped to deal with the unexpected.
Individuals that work on emergency crews of any kind are trained to act quickly and efficiently in high stress situations, more so than the general population.
Still, they’re only human, and they make mistakes just like the rest of us. The only difference is that their mistakes have much higher stakes.
Sometimes incorrect intervention can make a situation worse.
Ever try to help someone you didn’t know, only to find that your own stress about the situations rendered you the most unhelpful you’ve ever been?
We’ve all been there, but when someone’s safety is on the line, those kinds of mistakes can mean the difference between life and death.
Emergency services were forced to intervene when a woman’s morning hike in Arizona took a turn for the worse.
The unnamed 74-year-old woman was hiking up Piestewa Peak when she suffered an injury and had to be brought to a local hospital.
The Phoenix Fire Department had to airlift her out of the area.
Emergency airlifting is a frequently performed procedure, so when the woman was loaded into the airlift basket and properly strapped in, the helicopter began to take off as per normal.
Suddenly, the force of the helicopter began to violently spin the basket.
The elderly woman was spun around for more than a full minute while the helicopter attempted to land.
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“We do mountain rescues all of the time,” explained Fire Chief Shelly Jamison, “but this particular one gathered quite a bit of attention because during the rescue, she was packaged on a hoist in a Stokes basket and she started to spin.”
“Once we got the forward flight, the spin got to the point where they were safely able to bring the patient up to the aircraft”
The fire department attempted to land and take off multiple times, but the basket began to spin each time they got to a certain altitude.
Eventually, they were able to safely lift the woman into the aircraft.
Though not common, the incident is something that emergency crews are normally trained for.
“It’s just something that occurs every now and then and we train to deal with it,” the chief pilot explains.
“The potential for the basket to spin is something that’s a known phenomenon in the hoist rescue industry… we know of a similar situation happening only twice.”
The harrowing incident was caught on video.
The woman’s family has yet to release any details on her condition, though she was seemingly stable after being lifted into the helicopter.
At least we know that our rescuers are prepared for every possible outcome.
h/t: ABC15 Arizona
