At about 9:15 Tuesday night, we got a call from my uncle. Seems that somebody found a guy beat all to hell out at our airstrip. The guy told whomever discovered him before he passed out that he was in a car wreck. Only, there is no car anywhere to be seen (I checked the roads and my airstrip the next day). Ambulances and the local volunteer fire department, along with about half the sheriff's deputies in the county came out. After all, nothing better to do on a Tuesday night...anyway, turns out the guy had a whole bunch of love letters on him. By all appearances, he was fooling around with somebody's wife or girlfriend and the other guy found out and beat the crap out of him. We found out after we got there that EMS had arrived around eight o'clock or so, and a neighbor called my uncle when he got home from work, and uncle called us. Of course, the EMS guys just had to call for a med evac chopper. Never mind that from the time EMS arrived and the chopper landed, it was about an hour and a half. Nearest hospital was only about 15 minutes away. I know they had the guy stabilized, but still, I wouldn't want them to take that much time if I was injured...The way the EMS was operating did not make much sense. Instead of using the ambulance that they had him in to get him to the helicopter, they pulled the gurney out of the ambulance and wheeled it about 150 feet to the helicopter.
*The reason that they called the chopper in is that it is either use the chopper or lose it. If the helicopter does not get used enough, it gets cut from the services. So nowadays, instead of calling a medevac only for critical injuries, they will call for one anytime the opportunity presents itself. This was a perfect case to do so in. Easy landing access, safe, and it gets the flight crew some night time. Plus, everybody likes to see a helicopter.
Because it was an hour and a half before the chopper got there, and another twenty minutes before the helicopter departed, plus another half hour or so to get to a better hospitial than the local one, it was well over two hours before the guy got to a hospitial. Not that I really felt sorry for him. After all, I got the thrill of seeing a helo land at my airstrip...
