Airlift Northwest spokeswoman touts safety

By Christian Hill | The Olympian • Published July 08, 2008

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Airlift Northwest hasn't had a serious accident since a helicopter taking off from Providence St. Peter Hospital in Olympia crashed about three years ago, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.

safety record

•Sept. 11, 1995: Three people die when a helicopter crashes into Puget Sound while responding to an emergency call on Bainbridge Island. The likely cause is the pilot's failure to maintain sufficient altitude over the water.

•Sept. 29, 2005: A helicopter crashes into Puget Sound near Edmonds after dropping off a patient, killing the pilot and two flight nurses. The cause is undetermined.

•Oct. 28, 2005: A helicopter crashes upon takeoff from the second-story helipad atop Providence St. Peter Hospital in Olympia, injuring the pilot, two flight nurses and patient on board. The likely cause is pilot error.

Source: National Transportation Safety Board

The company refused to divulge its safety record for a story in Monday's Olympian.

Airlift Northwest, which responds to emergency calls from Olympia Regional Airport, has had three accidents since it began in 1982, according to the NTSB. Two were fatal, killing a total of six people.

An Airlift Northwest spokeswoman had declined to release safety information since the local base of operations moved from Puyallup to Olympia in February 2007.

The spokeswoman, Mardie Rhodes, said Tuesday that the nonprofit company has a good safety record, transporting more than 55,000 patients since its first flight.

Nationwide, there have been nine serious accidents with emergency medical aircraft this year — six of them involving helicopters — in what NTSB chairman Mark Rosenker called a "disturbing trend." Seventeen people have been killed in those accidents, one shy of the record number of deaths in all of 2004.

"We're very concerned about that," he told reporters last month visiting the scene in Flagstaff, Ariz., where two medical helicopters collided in midair, killing seven people, according to The Associated Press.

Each year, the greater Thurston County area has about 90 airlifts to the region's highest-level trauma unit at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle and specialized children's hospitals in central Puget Sound.

Christian Hill covers Lacey and military for The Olympian. He can be reached at 360-754-5427 or chill@theolympian.com.