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Air Force Rescue Supports Jumpers

by Andrew Butte |

Jumper caught by snag and suffered head injuries, patient recovered by Jolly91.

GOOD:
1.) Excellent info passed to N.Ops with correct elevation, temp and Lat-Long. Not sure if we got valid patient info prior to launch. Sorry Mercy wasted some valuable time.
2.) Great job by SJ on the ground directing us to the spot via radio.
3.) Excellent job taking care of the injured SJ till our PJ arrived, we assume the supplies dropped by Mercy helped.
4.) Excellent job cutting a clearing to lower stokes into. However on night goggles it looked to be right inside the fire.

LESSONS:
1.) Difficult to distinguish your vehicles headlights from all the burning trees under NVD.
a.) a overt strobe or overt chem-light buzz-saw might gave gotten us eyes on quicker.
2.) Be aware that our Helo weighs near 20K pounds (double a Huey) and puts out a lot of wind that can whip up your fire or recirculate ash even at 100-200 foot hover.
3.) Be aware that we only have 200 feet of hoist cable so it's real tough to do anything on steep terrain with 150foot burning trees.

Overall everyone that helped on the ground made our job easy. We hope you’re guy is doing well at Medford. I'm sorry we got pulled off the KRDD alert (we actually stood down at 1900 that day and got alerted at 2000). Blame my bosses for that and not your leadership. I’m pretty sure OES/USFS wanted to keep us there and I know who on our end wanted us home. Oh well, I get paid to work and not to think.

Cheers,
"CRZYi" Butte
Pilot - Jolly 91
129th Rescue Wpns&Tactics