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| Local EMS Gets Life Flight Lesson |
Look up. That's some basic advice given to local first responders Saturday as part of a training hosted by the Altona-Oneida-Wataga EMS group.
In addition to an open house held this year at their Wataga location, a training component featured the landing of a Life Flight helicopter operated by OSF Saint Francis Medical Center.
Organizer Pat Hennenfent tells WGIL in addition to looking up to make sure there are no power lines at a potential location for landing at an accident scene, making sure there's plenty of landing space is crucial, too.
"Everybody thinks a helicopter just comes in and goes straight down and lands, and it doesn't," Hennenfent said. "Their visibility is out. So, they have to have a clear approach. You've got to be away from all the trees, buildings, anything like that, to give them a clear approach to come in and land."
Steve Cornillaud is the pilot of St. Francis' Life Flight helicopter, and tells WGIL his helicopter can land in almost any type of area, but that doesn't mean he really wants it to do that.
"It falls back to kind of common sense for most people," Cornillaud said. "It's not that advanced even if they've never set [a helpcopter landing] up before, or figured out how to set up a landing zone. It's really kind of just common sense, since most people know what helicopters do."
Area EMS units were invited to the training session. The open house, in addition to all of AOW's gear, featured the local Red Cross, the Knox County 911 unit, and other things.
(WGIL News Story and Photos by Will Stevenson.) |
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| 05 19 12 by Newsroom |
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