April 21, 2020 Life Flight

The Liberty Gazette

April 21, 2020

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

After twelve years of flying people back and forth to their offshore jobs, Captain Grant Gibbons was looking for something more challenging and more rewarding. He wanted a job with purpose, one that would keep him on the edge. While sitting in the trailer on his two-week shift in south Louisiana, he came across the Lifetime documentary series about Memorial Hermann Life Flight®. After the first episode, he was hooked. This was the kind of flying he wanted to do. His search and rescue training, using night vision goggles, hoisting men from a boat rocked by waves, had given him a taste.

The documentary helped him prepare for the interview. Life Flight made the smart decision to bring him on board. When he takes one of their EC-145 helicopters to a public event, the questions most often asked are how fast and how high. The quick and easy answer is about 135 knots cruise speed and about 800 feet mean sea level. The altitude is based on the fact that they’re operating in Bush and Hobby’s airspace, and 800 feet is what they’ve agreed to. But there’s so much more to know about flying a Life Flight helicopter.

The EC-145 is a twin-engine aircraft operated by a single pilot. They can carry two patients plus a nurse and a paramedic.

Life Flight has six EC-145s at five bases: David Wayne Hooks Airport and Memorial Hermann The Woodlands Medical Center cover the north part of the Houston metropolitan area; the Pearland Regional Airport is the south base; the west base alternates between Memorial Hermann Sugarland and Katy; the Baytown Airport serves the east side, including Liberty; and the central base is at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center’s new trauma center, the 17-story Susan & Fayez Sarofim Pavilion.

When Grant first joined Life Flight, he served our area from the east base. Here, the calls were more often medical cases than accidents or crime-related injuries. When he got a call from the Liberty Fire Department or EMS, he’d land at the fire department to meet the ambulance.

He’d keep the aircraft running to save time while the medical crew hopped in the back of the ambulance to get information on the patient, then loaded them on the stretcher.

Having their own stretchers with wheels makes a difference because patients can be loaded and unloaded faster. The EC-145 is designed for this type of work, its clam shell doors making it easy to wheel the stretcher in quickly.

These days, based in the northwest part of Houston, Grant receives more on-site calls. These are the ones where he has to land in a football field, on a highway, or another acceptable landing zone. In those cases, the EMS on the scene is responsible for identifying and securing a landing zone of at least 100-by-100 feet. Once the patient is on board, Grant will take them to a hospital within the Memorial Hermann Health System.

While weather can be a factor affecting the decision to fly, the central base does have an instrument approach. This means they don’t have to have perfectly clear weather to bring your loved ones to the Texas Medical Center. They only need at least one mile of visibility and 400-foot ceilings. If the weather isn’t cooperating with those minimums, they can fly to Hobby Airport and rendezvous with an ambulance there. In that case, Life Flight’s medical crew will stay with the patient all the way to the hospital.

Life Flight helicopters are well equipped in the back with different types of blood, a LUCAS device (a mechanical chest compressor), liquid oxygen, narcotics, portable machines to get vitals, and an ultrasound machine to determine whether a patient has internal bleeding. The central-based helicopter is reserved for specialty flights and is also equipped with a balloon pump, an ECMO device (it filters blood), and an incubator for neo-natal patients. Any of the aircraft in the fleet can handle a specialty flight as long as they have a specialty nurse and the necessary equipment on board.

Life Flight helicopters sit prepared to lift off at any time with about two hours and twenty minutes of fuel on board. The average flight only takes about 15 minutes.

Those are some of the facts about Life Flight. But things are different in these days of the virus, and like many organizations, they have had to pivot.

For the greater Houston area, Life Flight will not be the primary means of transportation for those infected with COVID-19. However, one helicopter from the fleet has been reconfigured to accept patients who test positive for the virus. This special helicopter was put into service earlier this month and is based at the central base. Anything that could be contaminated has been removed, like swapping cloth for vinyl, and such. The nurses, paramedics, and pilots wear covers, masks, and gloves. Upon landing to pick up a patient, the copter is shut down to eliminate the rotor’s downwash and potential to spread the virus further. It’s not started back up until the patient is securely in the aircraft. After every mission, the helicopter is decontaminated, everything pulled out and disinfected before it’s put back into service.

Medical crews and pilots are not required to take these flights—it is all voluntary. But enough signed up that the specially-designated virus helicopter is staffed 24 hours a day, a bump up from the normal twelve-hour shift for the central base.

The Life Flight crews are a tight-knit group. Some are single with no children, more flexibility, and less risk of spreading the virus. Grant is comfortable with all the precautions Memorial Hermann has put into place, and he would be happy to volunteer for these flights. He’s the kind of guy who would stop to help anyone in need. But he needs to take care of more people than just himself. He and his lovely wife are parents of a five-year old and are expecting their second child soon. They are also the primary care takers of Grant’s father, who has late-stage Alzheimer’s and lives with them.

So, while he may not be in a position today to take virus patients, you can bet he’s eager and happy to transport others in need. This is where he finds purpose and gratification. As he says, “I can make a difference for someone possibly having the worst day of their life.”

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