Woman Needed To Be Saved From Her Helicopter Rescue
The helicopter rescue of a woman went very, very badly when the stokes basket she was in started spinning out of control.
The 75-year-old woman had been injured while hiking in Phoenix when rescue was called and the helicopter was sent to get her.
The rescue quickly took a turn for the worst once it got her off the ground.
Everything was fine as rescue workers evaluated the woman and loaded her into the basket so she could be hauled up to the helicopter. Then she turned into a human spinning top once she was lifted into the air.
She immediately started spinning in her basket as they raised her up. The higher she went the faster she started spinning.
Lucky It Wasn’t Worse
“We were doing a rescue, a hoist rescue, we do a lot of them, it was a normal rescue,” said Phoenix Police Air Support chief pilot Paul Apolinar. “Sometimes when we bring the helicopter up from the ground, it will start to spin, so we have a line attached to the basket to help prevent that. Today, it didn’t.”
There’s no telling how many G forces she felt while spinning that fast as a result of the equipment failure.
She suffered a facial laceration, injuries to her wrist, hip, and possibly a fractured nose during her hiking mishap. She was given medication for nausea and dizziness,
“I kind of was able to get in her face a little bit, make sure her eyes were open and told her everything was going to be okay,” Phoenix Fire Captain Bobby Dubnow said.
It’s not clear if she lost consciousness at any point during the massive spin, but it was determined she didn’t receive any further injury as a result of spinning out of control.
