LZ Operation on Christmas Eve

I will be posting more pictures of some of our activities at the fire company. One of those is LZ (landing zone) Operations. When a local EMS provider determines that a patient should be flown to a nearby hospital rather than transporting on the ground, one of several local medical evacuation (medevac) groups is called.

On Christmas Eve, MICU 87-6 had a patient who needed to be flown to HUP (Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania). PennSTAR responded and our company set up the LZ on a cul-de-sac on the road right outside of where the patient was working and had been injured.

The usual response is an engine and fire police. The crew from the engine sets up the landing zone (marked with cones during daylight or rod flares at night, as required) and provides the manpower for moving the litter with the patient from the ambulance to the helicopter. The fire police shutdown traffic and limit access to the LZ, especially during landing and takeoff. Helicopters tend to throw up quite a bit of debris during those times. Click the picture to see the full size. You will see how efficient the rotors are at sending leaves and such airborne.

You can see the full picture set on Flickr. Another nice feature I am going to be using on Flickr is the facility to show you where the pictures were taken.