Mission accomplished as Black Hawk helicopter lifts stranded chopper

By Candice Nelson
WSLS10 Reporter
Published: June 28, 2008

A Black Hawk helicopter circled around Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital and landed up the street at the hangar for LifeGuard 10 and 11.

“It was pretty awesome. I got blown back about 10 feet,” laughed 11-year-old, Jonathan Doran.

It was fun for a lot of people to watch, but the Black Hawk was getting ready for an important task. Since Wednesday, a state police medical helicopter was stuck on Carilion’s helipad. The stranded chopper brought a patient to RMH. As the pilots were getting ready to leave the hospital, they noticed a mechanical problem.

From there, they had several options to get it down.

“We couldn’t get a crane in here because there wasn’t enough room around the base of the hospital for the size crane they would need to remove it,” said Lt. R.N. Possumato with Virginia State Police.

So that left one other option. On Saturday, the Virginia Army National Guard came to the rescue, lifting the helicopter and carrying it away.

While all that was going on, Carilion was also flying in car crash victims to the hospital. Because the Black Hawk crew was busy, medical pilots couldn’t land at the helipad.

“It does require some inconvenience to come land at the Carilion Clinic Lifeguard pad and our ground ambulances would take them over to the hospital and it created somewhat of a delay,” said Paul Davenport.

But Carilion made sure there were enough crews and planning to get the job done.

“A whole lot more planning went into it than it will take to probably actually do the operation. It will probably be a ten to 20 minute operation to pull the helicopter off the rooftop,” said Davenport.

As the Black Hawk successfully landed, men rushed over to unhook the helicopters. It’s a mission completed in uncharted territory for the pilot, Shane Leipertz.

“What made it unique is it’s a unique load. We really didn’t have a full understanding of how it would behave when we lifted it off the ground,” Leipertz said.

But it was a task that turned out to be smooth sailing and even smoother landing.