NORTHVILLE, Mich. — Northville Township firefighters near Northville, Mich., practiced working with air medical crews on Wednesday morning, Oct. 7, when a U.S. Army National Guard Black Hawk and a Michigan Medicine Survival Flight helicopter set down near Millennium Park.
The two aircraft landed in a parking lot marked off directly behind the township fire department’s Station 1 on Six Mile Road, near Unity Skatepark. The Black Hawk, a UH-60 from the Guard’s 3rd Battalion, 238th General Support Aviation Battalion, known as Michigan MEDEVAC, came in first, and the Survival Flight helicopter followed a few minutes later.
The exercise came together in part because township firefighter Rob Casamatta is also a National Guard helicopter pilot, and he flew the Black Hawk. He built the scenario with the department’s EMS coordinator, Will Caruso. Crews marked two landing zones with reusable flares, briefed the pilots and used radios to warn them about hazards such as overhead wires.
Caruso said helicopter transports are uncommon in the township because several trauma centers are close by and transport times are short, which makes the skill a low-volume, high-risk task that crews must rehearse periodically. Air crews can bring resources ambulances often lack, including medications used to intubate patients at the scene and blood for transfusions.
Casamatta said the point of the drill was to make sure that when a real emergency calls for an air landing, it is not the first time firefighters have radioed an aircraft. The department trains from time to time with medical helicopters, but it was the first time a Black Hawk had landed behind the station. The training was open to the public.