PfD helicopter commander Derek Geisel said they had tried several techniques that had reduced rotation in the past, but they had not helped. The city of Phoenix and a woman who got out of a helicopter more than 200 times during a mountain rescue at Piestewa Peak in 2019 agreed to a settlement in December 2021. A video of firefighters taking a 74-year-old hiker into the air went viral yesterday after Twitter users took a clip of the stretchers spinning wildly as rescuers tried to load her into the helicopter. Now, firefighters from the Phoenix Fire Department behind the rescue are explaining to the press why the stretcher got out of control. The short version: It just happens. It was only when the helicopter began to fly away from its hovering position that the hard movements began to subside. The turn took about 40 seconds when the crew repeatedly tried to lift and lower the basket to get it out of the spiral. The woman`s rescue began around 8:15 a.m. .m .m Tuesday when authorities received a call that she had been injured on the summit trail of Piestewa Peak, a 2,612-foot-high mountain that is the second highest point in the Phoenix area. The woman, who has not been named, suffered injuries to her face and head as a result of a fall to the ground, authorities said.
Given the woman`s location, authorities opted for a long-term rescue, in which a rescuer abseiled from a helicopter to secure the woman in a stretcher at the end of a long line before taking her to the hospital. According to Apolinar, the Phoenix Fire Department has performed 210 hoist rescues in the mountains in the past six years, and this is the second time a crew has had a patient turned. But in this case, the operation quickly went wrong when a line designed to prevent the basket from turning broke when interacting with the helicopter`s rotor wash, said Derek Geisel, the rescue pilot. The basket turned wildly for about 40 seconds, with the crew lifting and lowering the 74-year-old man repeatedly while trying to slow down the turn. The Phoenix Fire Department decided to rescue the woman by helicopter after assessing the situation. “In this case, the crews decided that the helicopter would be the best option,” Dubnow told reporters. “Depending on the patient`s age, the mechanism of her injury, the heat of the day, the terrain, the amount of work and the time she would break in a Ferris wheel or whatever.” But after a rescuer abseiled out of the helicopter and tied the woman in a stretcher on a leash, something went wrong. “Reports from the hospital say it is stable and has had no rotational effect,” said PFD captain Bobby Dubnow. “We did a rescue, a winch rescue, we do a lot of it, it was a normal rescue,” he said. “Sometimes when we bring the helicopter from the ground, it starts to spin, so we attached a line to the basket to avoid that. Today, that was not the case. Apolinar further explained that the baskets tend to rotate when approaching the helicopter and interact with the wind coming from the helicopter`s rotors.
And although the hiker`s rotation seemed extreme, authorities report that she suffered no negative effects from the strange airlift. The answer to the last question is because most of us are terrible people. The question “Why it works” is less simple. While Apolinar described the spinning problem as “very rare” in the last case three or four years ago, he said the potential for rotation of the wild basket was “a well-known phenomenon in the hoist rescue industry.” [the basket] will start spinning,” Apolinar said. “We attached a leash to the basket to avoid this. At a press conference Tuesday afternoon, the Phoenix Fire Department announced that it had successfully performed 210 helicopter hoist rescues during mountain missions in the past six years, with only two known cases of rotations during that time. Paul Apolinar, the chief pilot of the police department`s aviation unit, attributed the violent rotations to a line that was not working properly. A helicopter rescuing a 75-year-old woman on a Stokes basket took a dramatic turn when it spiraled out of control on Tuesday.
The dizzying rescue of the injured hiker was filmed. Helicopter rescue at Phoenix Mountain Preserve should be routine. A 74-year-old woman tripped and fell during a morning hike on Piestewa Peak on Tuesday, becoming disoriented and unable to walk. Firefighters tied the elderly woman in a basket to take her to the hospital. A phoenix fire department spokesman said the woman was flown from Piestewa Peak after being injured while on a hike. When it was transported, the basket began to turn wildly. Phoenix Police Officer Chief Air Support Pilot Paul Apolinar said a line used to prevent filming was not working properly. Usually, an extra leash prevents the basket from spinning out of control, but in this case — perhaps due to strong winds — the leash failed and “eventually broke,” according to Derek Geisel, the operation`s rescue pilot. The crew moved the basket down and then up to soften the rotation. The flood of responses to fox 10`s viral tweet about the rescue contains many questions: is she okay?; why is there not more laundry to stabilize the stretcher?; “Why is she fucking so fast again”?; and “why did I laugh about it all day”? “In this situation, the metros and the city were able to agree on this controversial request. The City denies any wrongdoing or liability.
Metro was placed in a life basket and transported in a helicopter by firefighters. But the cable line, which was supposed to prevent the basket from spinning, broke during the rescue and sent it into an uncontrollable turn, KNXV-TV reported. But above all, the woman seems to be doing well on Wednesday morning. At a Phoenix Fire Department press conference Tuesday held in part in response to the online response, Phoenix Fire Captain Bobby Dubnow told reporters he spoke to the woman when she was tied to the helicopter after the hurricane adventure. “There are times when we bring the helicopter from the ground to the top, it`s going to spin, so we tied a leash to the basket to prevent that,” Paul Apolinar, chief pilot of the Phoenix Police Department, said at a news conference after the rescue. “When the basket appears and approaches the helicopter, the basket begins to interact with the helicopter rotor wash. Then it tends to rotate. He wants windmills. Firefighters were eventually able to take the woman, Katalin Metro, to the helicopter and then to a nearby ambulance. The helicopter rescue video has been viewed millions of times online. Metro suffered swelling and bruising all over his body during the botched rescue attempt.
Metro should have undergone surgery for cervical stenosis, a spinal cord injury, because of the spider out of control. She also underwent weeks of rehabilitation and her husband told KTAR News that her medical bills amounted to about $290,000. Firefighters said at the time that the lifesaver was caught in a wind under the helicopter and that a cable line designed to prevent the basket from turning was broken in the incident. .