I’m not a misanthrope. I like people. And not just the ones who have interesting cars; I think I’m fond of people in general. If you’re in a mental state where you’re currently not fond of people yourself, there’s a bit of news that happened that may change your perception, at least a bit. The news is not great; it’s about a medical helicopter that crashed on State Route 50 in Sacremento, California on Monday night. That’s not the part that will change your perception of anything. The part worth noting is that after the crash, a group of motorists around the site of the crash all worked together to physically lift the crashed helicopter to try to save a crewperson trapped inside.
The REACH Air Medical Services H130 helicopter had taken off from the rooftop helipad at US Davis Medical center and ended up crashing less than 30 seconds later due to what seem to be mechanical issues. Incredibly, and thanks to the pilot’s skill, the helicopter did not hit any of the cars on the road at the time.
A video of the helicopter actually crashing has made it online, and you can see the rotors smacking into the ground after the chopper ends up on its side. This particular type of helicopter is designed with a system to prevent the fuel from igniting after a crash, though large plumes of what looks to be smoke can be seen coming from the helicopter (though it’s likely from the helicopter’s fire suppression system):
The helicopter had three people onboard: a pilot, a nurse and a paramedic, all of whom are injured in the hospital. The pilot and paramedic are in critical yet stable condition, while the nurse remains in critical and unstable condition, per officials.
Things could have ended up far worse had it not been for the actions of about 15 motorists, who came to the aid of the paramedic who was trapped under the wreckage.
Sacramento Fire Captain Peter Vandersluis arrived at the scene in minutes, having already been dispatched to the area for a motorcycle accident. People had already left their cars to go to the wrecked helicopter to see if they could help, and Captain Vandersluis was able to organize the volunteers and get them to help. As he told the Associated Press:
“Just out of instinct — the people were there willing to help, and they didn’t hesitate and followed my exact commands. And we were able to lift it up with ease.”
There’s video of the people helping, taken by a witness at the scene:
Those are just regular folks, who happened to be either at the wrong place at the wrong time, or the right place at the right time, depending on your perspective. Their coordinated effort to tilt that helicopter up and allow first responders to get the trapped paramedic free could have saved her life.
Each one of those people lifting the chopper is a hero, stepping up to selflessly help someone without hesitation. It’s a good reminder that, given the opportunity, people will often come through and surprise you with their selflessness and goodness.
You know, at least sometimes.
Also, Highway 50 is a major E-W arterial…pretty much a gong show going through downtown Sac where UC Davis Med Center is. The fact that a dozen+ strangers had the wherewithal to safely slow down, stop, get out, and help is amazing.
Here’s to humans!
It’s amazing what groups of people can accomplish when they do not have phones in their hands.
Saw the video of the helicopter crashing and the automatic fire extinguisher immediately going off and smiled because I used to be involved in making those. Glad it saved some lives.
That was the first thing I noticed in the crash footage and thought “What a great idea! More aircraft should have those.” Hope it becomes a widespread technology.
I can confirm they are installed on helicopters and fighter jets. Google says that commercial aircraft have manually deployed extinguishers as they give discretion to the pilot so not terribly helpful in the event of a crash.
Cue up the lawsuit by the victim suing all the good Samaritans for moving the helicopter off of them. Stranger, and scummier, things have happened where someone trying to help, was sued for some BS reason.
I agree that stranger scummier things have happened, but this is why there are specifically good-Samaritan laws.
Health & Safety Code 1799.102, California’s Good Samaritan law protects from civil liability for negligence when:
They could only be sued for Gross Negligence or Willful or Wanton Misconduct, which I don’t think we see here.
But hey, a real lawyer may see all kinds a sue-able offenses here; who knows?
It’s going to be hard suing them if they were followingg the guidances of a Sacramento Fire Department Captain on the scene, as Jason article mention.
Stories like this are important to tell and retell, because we seem to have forgotten something lately in this country: most people are basically good people who will help out in an emergency.
I’ll bet none of those people helping to right that helicopter asked each other who they voted for. They probably had more pressing concerns on their minds in the moment.
My thoughts exactly. I think this peaked during the 1989(?) earthquake during the world series. Glad to see humans acting humanely.
As a native of hurricane country, I see this year in and year out. Don’t tell me Americans won’t rise to the challenge when their neighbors are hurting.
But will those same people help someone who isn’t their direct neighbor? (i.e. one of them?)
Are they just as enthusiastic to support disaster relief to a different state?
I lived in Beaumont, TX when Harvey sat over us for a few days in 2017. We got 26″ of rain in one day and over 50″ that week. The Louisiana-based “United Cajun Navy” did amazing things out of the kindness of their hearts/souls and their bass boats.
This! My first thought when I saw the headline, I hope this is in the US because stories like this give me hope.
When you get people away from the rage bait echo chamber of social media, I think most people would have more in common than not.
You know what will give you the most hope of all? Take a cross-country drive. Talk to strangers everywhere you stop. You will learn within a few hundred miles that people are just people, and most people are actually pretty good people.
If they see you as one of them.
If they’ve been told you’re one of the “others”, and therefore you are to blame for their problems, things would be very different.
/Okay. I’m way too cynical today. I’m off to touch grass or something…
Don’t fret, you’d fit right in. Cynicism runs deep in the one true City of Trees, where “Sacramento Hates You Too” has become a uniting dumpster fire of a slogan warming locals’ hearts: https://shyt-co.myshopify.com/
Sacramentans are still the kind of people who’d run to help rescue someone from a crashed chopper on a busy freeway.
This. We’re an interracial gay couple who taken multiple road trips to 41 states. We stay in small cities and towns. In over a decade we’ve had nothing but wonderful experiences and stories to tell.
That’s exactly what I mean. This reminds me of an anecdote I read in the book “Pick A Better Country,” the autobiography of black conservative radio host Ken “The Black Avenger” Hamblin, which not only illustrates this point, but is also Autopian-adjacent content:
His first profession was as a press photographer, and he covered many of the civil rights demonstrations of the 1960s. Naturally, this gave him an aversion to white people, whether or not it was reasonable, and he shared the story of the event that softened his heart and changed the course of his life. He was living in Pittsburgh in the early 1970s, and he and a group of friends were all deep into little British roadsters and had a car club of sorts, most of which consisted of helping each other fix their broken British cars, LOL. One day in February, Ken was out for a solo drive through the mountains of West Virginia, when his MGB or Triumph or whatever conked out on the side of the road. He was immediately anxious – not only was it shortly before sundown and already very cold, but he was a lone black man stranded in rural West Virginia in the 1970s. You can understand his concern, for either reason.
So he started walking, looking for a place to use the phone, when he happened across a small country general store. It was closed for the day, but the house on the same property, obviously occupied by the owners, had lights on and smoke coming out the chimney. He screwed up every bit of his courage and knocked on the door. He was greeted by an elderly white woman in an apron, and he could see and feel over her shoulder the life-giving heat coming off a Franklin stove. He knew that he would be dead either way if he didn’t get some help, so in his most respectful tone of voice, he said, “I’m terribly sorry to bother you, ma’am, but my car broke down a couple miles from here, and I was hoping I could use your telephone.”
He says she looked him up and down, in the three longest seconds of his life, then threw the door open and said in a cheerful voice, “Well, son, get on in here before you freeze to death out there! Honey, can you call so-and-so down at the service station and tell him to come up here with his tow truck? This young man’s broken down up the road a bit.”
As he sat by the stove thawing out, as her husband was on the phone with the local tow truck driver, with a fresh cup of hot coffee in his hands and being offered to stay for supper besides, he had a moment of clarity:
“Maybe I was wrong.”
That is a nice feeling, but I’m too cynical at this point.
Sure, I bet some of them in this case are genuinely caring people, and I guess people might help in an emergency.
However, a majority of the population, is dominantly self-centered and cruel at this point, when they have time to think about it.
Ask them to vote for a policy that will prevent thousands from slowly starving to death, dying from a lack of basic medical access, or to teach a child to read, and they’ll vote NO with enthusiasm. Ask them to vote for a policy that respects someone else’s basic human dignity, and which has zero impact on their own day to day life, and they’ll vote NO with confidence and idignance about even being asked about such crazy policies.
Most people are basically not good people anymore.
I disagree completely with you and most people are good and most people all want the same thing. Are you wrong? I can’t say as you have a right to feel and think this way. All the same, sounds like you are having a bad day or bad week, sorry to hear that. To help, I would suggest getting your eyes off of your screen and turn the news (that crap is designed to make you rage) off and go outside and definitely touch grass. Maybe smoke some too? Make sure you have a burn permit though prior to burning your grass piles.
“Accept my framing on you’re a nazi BIGOT!”
I’ve identified the problem: it’s not them, it’s you. I suggest the same thing as Edward- put down the screen and go touch lots of grass.
“Ask them to vote for a policy-”
No. Stop. Ew. Gross. No.
No.
Absolutely not.
You ask one human person what that human person has in his or her heart.
For God’s sake, not everything is politics. Honestly, very little of it is. I like to think of this place as evidence of that.
Until shit like this comes up.
This happened on the freeway I commute on. There is a ton of construction happening in the area that snarls traffic so the fact that no cars were hit by the crash is amazing. The people stepping up to help is what people do out here contrary to many people’s beliefs. I hope the best for the crew. I have friends that do that type of work and it’s easy to take the dangers associated with it for granted. All of the dash cam footage of the crash has been surreal to watch.
Yeah, hats off to the pilot for only crashing his own vehicle and no others. I’ll bet you tomorrow’s paycheck that if I related this story to my Vietnam veteran dad, he would instantly say, “I’ll bet he had combat experience.” As a 1Lt in Vietnam in 1968 – he arrived shortly after that big New Year’s party they threw that year, AKA the Tet Offensive – he was in not one, but two helicopters that were shot out of the sky, and everyone walked away from both crashes. I am alive today because of all the times that chopper pilots saved my dad’s bacon in Vietnam.
I’ve heard him talk about being stopped by a huge car crash on the highway, and seeing the medevac chopper circle and land. Once he saw the pilot land the chopper inside a tight square with power lines on all four sides, barely bigger than the rotor diameter of the chopper. He said, certainly that guy has stuck landings while being shot at before. Conversely, he has also seen medevac choppers circling and circling looking for a place to land, and thinking to himself, “Why not right over there, you coward? Lieutenant So-And-So got me out of a tighter spot than that while taking fire!”
My dad meets other veterans as equals, regardless of age, rank, or branch of service, but there are only two types of veterans he respectfully refers to. One is Army Rangers – tell my dad that you were a Ranger, and he will give a slight bow and say, “Hey, Rangers lead the way.” The other is combat chopper pilots. He owes his life, as well as mine, to their skill and courage.
Watch some of the “dustoff” scenes from “We Were Soldiers,” and you’ll see what I mean. I saw that in the theater with my dad when it came out, and he said that they were 100% accurate. Me, I wonder how they can keep those birds straight and true without the enormous weight of their gigantic balls pulling them off course.
I’m glad your dad made it through that alive!
The county I used to live in had a number of Vietnam era Hueys still in service and I got to ride in them quite a bit. You could see the riveted patches where they repaired bullet holes on the skin.
I too routinely travel that stretch of 50 – and that was the first thing I thought – how were ZERO cars hit? That area is pretty densely populated and the crash could have been SO much worse.
Yeah, and there is major construction going on there now.
Things like this help my waning faith in humanity.
Hats off to anyone who will step up in an emergency. There are good people in the world, you just don’t know it to look around. So good to see, hope for the best for the crew.
When I see stories like this, I inevitably think back to my middle-school days in the 70’s and I want to sing “Up! With People!” Anyone else remember them? They’re most relentlessly positive and optimistic group I’ve ever seen, singing inane but catchy pro-human songs. And they’re apparently still around. They’ve updated their performance a bit, but here’s the one I remember: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZHXkPSx6lA
BTW, if you want a good-news boost from time to time, check out “Reasons to be Cheerful” founded and led by David Byrne. Yep – that David Byrne.
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/
I was in a high school production of “Up with People” in the very early ’70s. I soloed “He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother”. My heavens that was so long ago!
Cheers and applause for the rescuers and hoping for the best for the aircrew. What’s a bit sad is that it seems like tragedy is the only stimulus that elicits our common humanity these days. Would that we could all pull together so well in everything else.
The problem is, in “everything else,” the stakes are not as high, or at least, not as readily apparent. Walk a mile in my moccasins and all that. But a crashed medevac helicopter in the middle of the highway? Everyone knows exactly what they are looking at and what’s at stake, and how desperately the people inside need as much help as they can get, right now.
On the other hand, when the stakes are lower and the need less readily apparent, if there’s an argument to be made, we need to have the argument. But there’s no arguing over a crashed helicopter in the middle of the interstate. You just help. Now.
This proves there are still good people in this world, ICE stormtroopers excepted.
Yes. They are even better than that. Yay ICE! Saving our Republic one toxic criminal illegal alien at a time!
This is why I hate bringing up this bullshit in this arena. This is no place for it. And there is no shortage of literally anywhere else on the internet you can complain about such things. Please do that there.
Admins, please delete both this comment and my reply to it.
Bless me, Joe, for I have sinned. Not happy about the optuple-plus in good goings on in Chicago.
Then do the rest of us a favor and please express your displeasure in another, more suitable forum.
This is a car website. For car people. About cars. Please, can we keep just one small corner of the internet that way?
Reddit is thataway —->
Please keep you tantrums confined to the designated hugbox, this space is for car weirdos.
Hasn’t been a good few years for Airbus helicopters. An asset like that going down is nightmarish but lucky it was only the flight crew near the hospital and not a patient as well.
Assuming that the intended patient the helicopter was headed out for was able to receive alternate medical help.
Fortunately, if there can be such a thing in a scenario like this, the embedded news video said they had just dropped off a patient, so there likely wasn’t anyone waiting for them right that moment.
Ah, that is good to know.
Most medivac helicopters have a base other then the hospital helipad. Typically a hanger where maintenance can be done. They were probably returning to base after just dropping a patient off.
From being under an approach path 3 helicopters routinely serviced the one I lived near. Who knows how many the coast guard used as they are kinda painted the same.
Hospital only had one pad so even on standby they had to live elsewhere.
For sure, sometimes when I’m in a new city I find myself looking at adsb exchange following them to their base. Many times they are more regional the in a single metro partly because different hospitals have different specialties and levels of care.
As a volunteer firefighter/ EMT I was involved with a call to a army base where they had civilian contractors working on their hangers. The guy had fallen off the roof and several pilots were looking at the guy. They were transferring to Blackhawks from Hueys shorly and were all to happy to give the Hueys a last harah. What we didn’t really think about is how much bigger a Huey is compared to a jet ranger or similar that was commonly used during the time. We had to close the road down in front of the pad for the tail to stick out and one of the guys jumped out to guide him in. Those helipads look big but they really aren’t.
The area I used to live in, the county has several Vietnam era Hueys still in service. You can see the little riveted patches where they’ve repaired the bullet holes….
Anyway, the hospital was renovated recently and a new heliport installed on the roof. Soon after that, the county got a Firehawk (a Blackhawk converted to firefighting service with a belly tank) and it’s too big/heavy to land there. So, they have to put down on a local Middle School playing field and then transfer by ground ambulance. What a mess…
That’s similar to what happened with that hospital they were constantly renovating and their roof top helipad was too small for the huey, they had a secondary landing zone that was also too small because they had build things next to it. It used to be their main helipad outside the ambulance bay to the er. I’m fairly sure at least one government agency was operating a newer Huey as a medivac that could possibly go to that hospital but likely not as there were other hospitals with similar levels of care closer to where they operated. It didn’t help the army pilots followed the roads to get there they even took the exit ramps.
That’s what IFR stands for – “I Follow Roads”!
The nurse lived in Redding but not sure they operated from that far north, it’s 180 miles north or so. They could have been going towards McClellen or Mather because they were not heading towards the executive airport.
I just heard that they operated out of Shasta Country.
I’m not sure if it’s the same in the US, but in the UK, the main purpose of the air-ambulance is to get paramedics and equipment to the patient as soon as possible. The quick transfer to hospital is a side benefit.
It’s the same but that far north there are not great hospitals and UC Davis Medical is really good hospital with more specialties, equipment, and other things they are do not have access to in the rural Northern California area. Sometimes they move transplant patients to surgery that way since time is of the essence in those situations.
Patients we hand off to Reach usually go to Santa Rosa, but more specialized cases – like burns – will go to Davis or UCSF.
In rural Northern California, it’s generally the local volunteer firefighters who arrive on scene first and their EMTs provide BLS service. Usually a ground ambulance will show up shortly after that and their paramedic will take over care.
Medevac is automatically dispatched for a number of call types including traffic collisions, trauma, burns, and anything cardiac. The firefighters paramedics can also request a helicopter once they’re on scene and determine the need.
It depends on the area here. I think the vast majority there are EMT and now likey in most areas paramedics first on the scene by ground. But remote areas the helicopters could be first on the scene. People in rural areas will purchase an additional insurance for being transported via helicopter they often referred to those as life flights.
It’s so nice to say, Good for people! Best wishes for the victims.
This is horrible and the last thing you want to see happen to anyone, especially those who are dedicating their lives to helping others…
As a volunteer firefighter in Northern California, we work with Reach all the time and I’ve probably handed off patients to this exact crew more than once…
Wishing them all speedy recoveries…