By Carla Slavey
Commonwealth Journal
SOMERSET, Ky. — It is fitting, perhaps, that a celebration honoring Air Methods on Thursday was interrupted by a call requiring the air ambulance service to fly a patient out.
After all, they have been helping patients in Pulaski and the surrounding areas for the past 20 years.
The air ambulance service Air Methods celebrated the 20th anniversary of their Pulaski base last week with food and camaraderie, as members of the service were joined by the community, other first responders and staff of the Lake Cumberland Regional Hospital.
The service staffs four pilots, four nurses and four medics at the Pulaski base — known as KY3 — and three of the current staff members have worked in Somerset for the full 20 years.
Clinical Base Lead Rudy Garrett, Paramedic Andy Sayers and Pilot Tom Watters were honored for their many years of service at the Pulaski base. While Garrett and Sayers were on hand to receive their awards of appreciation, Watters was on his way to Lexington, piloting the helicopter on a medical run.
Also honored at the anniversary event was Flight Nurse Karin de la Peña, who was recognized for having worked 27 years for Air Methods, and who has supported Somerset’s and Londons bases, as well as all the Kentucky bases.
Garrett said that around 70% of the air ambulance’s runs are hospital transfers, while 30% are scene flights for accident or trauma patients.
“Why they call us is because we go two miles a minute,” Garret said. “We average about 150 miles per hour when we’re in the air.”
That means it takes just under 30 minutes to fly someone to Lexington, he said.
Air Methods partners with LCRH, which is why they set up their base next to the hospital’s landing pad. However, Air Methods is it’s own service separate from the hospital, and Somerset’s base is just one of four that is located within Kentucky.
Patients from Pulaski and the surrounding areas can be brought to LCRH or taken to hospitals in Lexington, Louisville, Cincinnati, Knoxville or Nashville, Sayers said.
The Air Methods pilots are tasked with not only flying the helicopter but also keeping an eye on the weather to make sure it is safe for crews to fly, Sayers said.
“They sit and watch the weather pretty seriously, and if it gets to be marginal weather we’ll have a discussion before we leave,” Sayers said. "(We see) if everybody’s comfortable with what we have, and once it gets to a certain point we don’t go because of safety.”
Unforeseen incidents do occur, however, and Sayers said they have had to make changes to plans once they were already up in the air.
“We’ve had to land short a couple of times when (the weather) doesn’t do what it says, when the weather’s not predicted correctly, or sometimes they don’t get it right or something happens that’s unsuspected. We’ve had to land short and take ambulances. That’s part of the job,” Sayers said.
But he and his fellow medical team members say that the benefit to helping people within the community is rewarding.
Sayers said he worked as an EMT and a paramedic for several years with a road-based ambulance service, and said he appreciates that the air service has more freedom to treat patients.
“We have a lot more freedom, a lot more advanced guidelines to follow here,” he said. “Of course, we’re sitting with a nurse — RN — that allows us to do a lot more as a paramedic, because we work as a team. So we’re allowed a lot more medications, a lot more procedures and equipment,” Sayers aid.
“An ambulance has its perks, too,” he added. “Short runs and usually quick in and out.”
Area Manager Danny Bray said he was excited to see Air Methods being in Pulaski for 20 years, and expected it to continue here for at least 20 more.
Bray thanked the community for its support.
“In our business, it does not survive without community support,” he said. “Being here for 20 years, we’re deeply woven in the fabric of Somerset-Pulaski County and the surrounding areas.”
Garrett said that taking care of people in the community is something he is most proud of.
That includes taking care of people that he knows personally, or who have seen him out and about after he helped them. “That’s kind of good, kind of bad, because you know people,” he said. “People will see me out and go, ‘Hey, you took care of me.’ and I don’t remember their name, because I see them (while they are) lying down. I see them at their worst.”
The crew very rarely gets to see how the story ends for the patients they fly, but in one notable case, they are able to see first-hand how their actions save lives. Before the base moved to Somerset, Garrett said that it started in Whitesburg in the far eastern part of the state.
One of the Somerset base’s current pilots is Aaron Hamm, who has worked here with Air Methods for two years. During Thursday’s event, Hamm told the crowd about an incident 22 years ago in Hazard where he was severely injured.
Hamm said he was working at a kids camp one summer when he drove a 4-wheeler off a bridge that was 17 feet high.
He said that due to the accident, he “shattered my spine, crushed my skull, died three times — twice in the ER, once in the OR — was paralyzed, (and) had to learn how to walk again. ... The impact of the people who saved my life, I didn’t really realize much later.”
He said he didn’t realize that base had become this base until he requested to be a pilot here. He then found out that some of the people who helped him then were working here.
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