Really thought I was going to see something much worse a few years ago when there was a major wreck involving at least one full van. Seven people including two kids needed air evac. Landing area was a parking lot that, IMO[1], was reasonable for one helicopter, tight for two and bordering on suicidal for three. Think 30 car capacity, tops, and one of them was still parked there. Power lines right at the edge on two sides, building on a third and a fence on the fourth. Fifth in was Teddy Bear Transport[2]. How in the hell he managed to find space to not hit anything is beyond me and apparently everybody else that was near the site, but I definitely got the impression that crew would have hovered with a skid on the sheriff's hood rather than delay getting to the kids.
While everybody was settled in with engines down prepping their patients, we got a better look at the situation. Three of the five had tucked their rotors in under the power lines, and one had less than six inches clearance between the underside of his tail boom and the top of the pipe fence. Damned impressive fine control, and getting out was only slightly less hairy.
[1] Bear in mind I spent several years helping granddad at the airport, so I've watched a lot of helicopters try to squeeze into the space within reach of the Jet A hose when something else was already there. Then again, the primary fixed obstruction there was a 7500 gallon above ground tank of fuel, so maybe that kept most pilots from pushing their luck and/or skill quite as hard.
[2] Cook Children's Hospital's pediatric specialty transport service. Their helicopter is an EC145[3] fitted out specifically for pediatric trauma transport. For anything less urgent, they have a couple of fixed-wing transport aircraft that pick up at the local airport, or several ground ambulances.
[3] And they must have been in the air with a couple of JATO bottles strapped on when the call came in because they were less than ten minutes behind the two Fort Worth birds that started nearly 40 miles closer and the CareFlite out of Grand Prairie...which was maybe 15 minutes behind the one out of Granbury.
