#7 Pt 2: Lt. David Lujan — Bernalillo County Helicopter Rescue Operations
Welcome to Episode 7 of FireFighter Kingdom. This episode is Part 2 of our interview with Lt. David Lujan of the Bernalillo County Helicopter Rescue. David Lujan has served for almost 14 years in the fire service and is also as the Public Information Officer (PIO) for Bernalillo County Fire Department.
This is a great episode that goes over more of a community aspect as a member of the public (Vince) interviews David and asks questions about hiking preparation to avoid being rescued. A viral helicopter rescue from the news, and other public recommendations to stay safe while outdoors.
Robert Sanchez: And just talking about what you guys do for the community, Vince, our cohost, he wanted to come by. He’s a member of the public, he enjoys hiking, and I just wanted him to come out just to get the public’s aspect of this podcast.
David Lujan: Sure, absolutely. Love that, and I think the big thing for us, one of the things to talk about, and we can get to it, but our request for services last year totaled 48, and here we are in 2020, and we’re only coming into the month of June, and we’re already at 32 requests for services. So, we’re 16 shy of what we did last year, and we’re only at June. I think a big part of that is just because of what’s currently going on with the pandemic, and people are out utilizing these established trails out in the mountains and finding themselves getting hurt.
Robert Sanchez: Sure, sure. Again, Vince is just a member of the community, our producer, and it’s good our cohost also, it’s always good to have Vince sitting here and talking, get the perspective of the community and the public.
David Lujan: Oh, absolutely.
Robert Sanchez: How’re you doing Vince?
Vince Trujillo: Hey, good man. Thanks for letting me come on for a little bit. I was just sitting here amazed by the conversation because some of it was just like from a firefighter’s perspective, administrative side, and then some of the things you were talking about being prepared out in the wilderness. So, I want to ask a couple of questions from my perspective and some people who go out in the outdoor in the community, the COVID thing’s going on, everyone is getting cabin fever, wants to get out and do some things. My girlfriend and I hike a lot, and we go out, and we’ve even bought one of those little Garmin’s SOS devices that if you have an emergency in the middle of nowhere.
We were kind of wondering about that stuff. We do overnighting, we do extended overnights, backpacking too. So, just the first thing is if I get stuck out in the middle of nowhere, and you said you can drop care packages, you can also do… I’m messing up the words here, but the bucket lift, or you can take us out of there if we need to. You may not be able to get to us; you can throw a care package and stuff. If I’m out in the middle of nowhere, and I have the ability through an SOS system, and something’s gone terribly wrong, what is the criteria to press that SOS? Say I’m just tired, I’m out in the middle of nowhere, I don’t think I want to talk 20 miles to get back to where I’m at, do I hit the SOS or do I have to have a broken leg or I’m out of water or potentially I’m going to get hypothermia overnight or dehydration during the day. What’s the criteria, the threshold I should think of?
David Lujan: Vince, that’s a great question, and I wish I had a very specific protocol that we follow. The reality of it is, brother, that we see it all. We see some people who are just, “Hey, I’m tired. I don’t want to walk anymore. I don’t think I’m going to be able to make it out of here.” Then they call, and it’s like, hey, they were only about maybe 30 yards from the trail and maybe a mile from where they needed to be. And by us going out there to evaluate that criteria, be the eye in the sky and see where their coordinates are at, we kind of say, “Hey, well you’re not very far from where you need to be, just keep going in this location.”
David Lujan: Because what we don’t want to do is take a lot of inherent risk for something that we know that these individuals could just potentially walk out. Now, we’ve also had some where people are still that close from the trail, but they’re severely dehydrated to the point where they’re potentially going to have a syncopal episode. Well, that’s changed now, that’s definitely more of a critical medical condition. So, we feel that by taking in that information, and we can safely get some people into the ground, we would do that. Or we would anything encourage, yes, use your SOS. Try to get in contact to dispatch center so that we can even get ground units to you.
It really depends on what your comfort level is. It sounds like you go out, you hike a lot. You’re pretty sure of yourself and you kind of know what your capabilities are, so let’s just say you had a little bit of a sprained ankle. You took a wrong jump off of a rock and it’s kind of, “Ah, it’s kind of bothering me, but I think I’m going to be okay,” because you do it quite often. And you end up making it out on your own, or say you jump off the rock and you sprain your ankle, and say, “Ah, this is not just a sprain, this is a break. I’m fairly confident I’m not going to be able to get out of here on my own.” Well, then that’s the time to hit that SOS or try to contact EMS to try to get us there.
Each individual is going to be a little bit different. Again, just evaluate your situation, but the one thing that I really would encourage anybody is that if they feel that they’re not going to be able to get out on their own, call us as quick as they possible can because daylight is always an issue for us. We do fly at night, we do have night vision capabilities, and we recently just trained up to do night hoisting operations. So, those are capabilities to try to get you out, but it doesn’t mean that we’re going to be able to do that. Every mission we take is very unique, and it’s very critical. So, what’s happened in the past is people wait until probably an hour before sundown, and they say, “Hey, I’m probably not going to be able to get out of here.” They end up hitting their SOS-
Vince Trujillo: That’s the time that they hit, yeah.
David Lujan: Yeah, when they already kind of knew what their condition was three to four hours prior to that. So, it’s kind of one of those catch 22s. I don’t think it’s necessary to call us if it’s just something where you still feel that you can get out, or you’re just looking for some moral support. But two, if you truly feel that you’re not going to be able to get out of there, call us as quick as possible so we can get the resources needed, whether on the ground or in the air.
Vince Trujillo: So, it sounds like one of the things that you said then, well, if you’re more experienced hiking, you kind of know your capabilities. I carry water, we carry snacks, we carry a little small first aid kit usually, my girlfriend works in a hospital, so she’s always like, “I got the first aid kit ready to go.” But then like you said, we see some people pretty far up and, in some places where… Yeah, like La Luz Trail here in the Sandias. That’s one of those places where I was surprised to hear, well, people can fall down and die, but also… I wasn’t surprised about that, but I was surprised that they need to be rescued because it’s right on the front side of the mountain.
You would think that’s not a very scary place, but it’s someone not knowing their capabilities and not being prepared with water or even clothing. It’s the desert, it gets really cold at night, it gets really hot in the daytime. So, you can get either hypothermia at night or dehydration in the same day sometimes. It sounds like knowing your skillset and where you’re at, and you can die in any situation if you’re not prepared.
David Lujan: Absolutely, and I just want to first off by saying, Vince, thank you for going out, when you go out being prepared. You and your girlfriend there, that’s what we encourage everybody to do, and we’d have to say that a large majority of the people that are utilizing these trails are doing all the right things. They’re wearing the proper clothing, they’re packing food and water, they have the ability to have a phone, to be able to contact medical or dispatch, whatever they need to do, but there is still that small population of people who they go underprepared. And those are the people that we tend to find ourselves out there rescuing.
Not all the time, we’ve definitely gone out there and rescued very experienced hikers and climbers, backpackers. Anybody can find themselves in these situations, but-
Vince Trujillo: Oh yeah, you hear of people who’ve been doing it their whole lives and they got caught in a freak blizzard or a freak rain. They get caught in a slot canyon or in a freeze or something. A couple more questions, last two questions for you I have is, so if I do have to get rescued, who pays for that? What entity is the one that goes out there? Because I’ve done some trails before where they say, “Hey, don’t be silly or stupid out there because you’re going to have to pay five grand to take a helicopter trip out of here.” How does that work with your local jurisdiction, or how do I know the jurisdictions or how that works?
David Lujan: Yeah. Well, whoever those individuals were that are saying that, there’s absolutely some truth to that. But what I can tell you with the Bernalillo County resource that’s available to you through our program, through the Metro Air Support Unit and the Air Rescue Taskforce and the UNM Reach and Treat Program, if we go in and we fly in, whether we hoist you out, we land, put you in our aircraft, fly you back somewhere, or we short haul you out on a long line, there’s no cost associated with it at all. This is a public use helicopter, so that means that the taxpayer pays for this.
Now, there’s been a few situations where, again, we have the capabilities of providing full ALS medical care, but depending on the criticality of that patient, if we can get them to another air agency like Lifeguard, PHI, MedFlight, to fly those individuals out. Like I stated earlier, our bread and butter is to get them out of that austere environment via landing, hoisting, short haul, whatever it takes. Then we want to hand them off to another agency, and sometimes that is an air agency.
So, our basically, operation part of that, you’re going to see no bill for that. But if we hand you over to another agency like Albuquerque Ambulance, Lifeguard, PHI, MedFlight-
Vince Trujillo: The private ones, yeah.
David Lujan: Your private ones, you’re going to see a bill associated with it. So, definitely want to distinguish the two because we’ve had that situation where we helicoptered somebody out, and then we transferred them over to this other air ambulance-
Vince Trujillo: And they got a big bill.
David Lujan: And they got a big bill, and they’re like, “Hey, I thought I wasn’t going to get charged for this.” Well, you didn’t get charged from us, you got charged from them.
Vince Trujillo: So, just for the public’s point of view, it’s like, hey, be prepared because it could cost you not just your life or if why make it through it could be a stiff bill if you’re not… So, just be smart, look up some common sense tactics and things to be prepared, and you won’t have to worry about your life and the big bill.
David Lujan: Absolutely. And again, what I encourage anybody though, you can’t put a price on a life. So, if you find yourself in situation, don’t let that be the primary focus. Contact dispatch, we’re going to do whatever it takes to make sure that we can get resources to you and get you out of there. And financing it should be the last thing you think about especially of somebody’s critically hurt.
Vince Trujillo: That’s true, and last question I had, just real quick because this was in the news. I remember watching it, I remember freaking out because it was a video on the news of an 80 or 90-year old woman being rescued out of Arizona. I think she was in the desert, and she had hydrated, had a lot of other issue, and I just remember the video, and we’ll play it on our YouTube channel of her just spinning out of control, and then getting hoisted up. From my perspective, and a lot of friends were like, “Holy crap, if that was to happen to me, just leave me out there. I don’t want to have to take a two-hour helicopter trip where I’m spinning.” That revolution speed, it was like a fun park, she wasn’t having fun.
I talked to you before this episode, you shed some light on it. So, I know it’s funny, it’s sad, it’s tragic, it’s scary, but there was also an impact to the local rescue crew too. Tell us a little bit about that from that perspective what we should know.
David Lujan: Yeah. No, I think everybody knows what we’re talking about there. It was even on the Late Night Show, they did a funny bit about it. But the fact of the matter is that somebody, there was a flight agency involved, there was actually a patient that, that happened to, and it was kind of a bad day for everybody involved. But before I sit back and try to armchair quarterback anybody’s rescues or missions, just to say that, that air agency out there in Arizona has performed multiple rescues and they’ve done amazing jobs out there with the stuff that they do.
We follow them, they’ve had their program even longer than we have, and those guys do really great work out there. But in this situation, they found themselves in a bad situation where a patient started to spin. And what you’ve got to understand with the aircraft and the physics and how the effects of the rotors work from the ground in the air, as soon as you pick somebody up off the ground, depending on where they’re at from the ground in space in the air, and as your lifting over the helicopter, there’s this cone that goes underneath the helicopter, and we call that the dirty air. If you get somebody in that dirty air, they’re going to spin.
So, what do you do to get them out of that dirty air? Well, you adjust and manipulate your helicopter so you can try to avoid that. There’s different hoisting techniques that you can use, but the primary thing that needed to be done in that situation, it’s just dynamic, and that means fly forward and essentially get that load out of that dirty cone there. So, now that the load is somewhat behind the aircraft, which is no longer underneath the aircraft in that dirty air situation. It’d be a little bit easier if I had a diagram to explain that, but that’s really the short end of it.
We’ve had hoisting situations where people start to spin. Nowhere to that extent, it’s just we’re talking one or two little spins, and the first thing we do is we elevate, lift up so that we’re clear of any overhead obstructions, and then we immediately start flying forward.
Vince Trujillo: So, it could have been that they were just trying to slow hoist her up, and they spent more time in that funnel thing. We need to be at least a little bit… Like you said, these guys have done lots of rescues, dozens or maybe even hundreds without incident. This one just happened to be caught on the news.
David Lujan: Yeah, that’s the irony behind that is they didn’t get all the good ones on TV that they do. They kind of got the bad ones, and that’s sometimes how an organization or even an individual can be defined for the rest of their career or forever. How long until something else changes. But yeah, this one it kind of sucked because they caught it on film, and every rescue that we do for the most part, it’s usually a picture’s being taken or somebody’s filming because a lot of times these individuals are on the ground and they’re looking at this stuff.
We had a rescue that went international, and when we lifted this guy off the ground, there was a little bit of a spin, nothing drastic like that, but there’s also going to be somebody there to armchair quarterback how it could have been done differently or why did they even hoist him out? Why didn’t they carry him out? At the end of the day, each organization has to evaluate how they do things. There is a very strategic, what we call a general assessment of risk that we take before we do any type of mission. So, if we’re hoisting somebody out, we’re short hauling somebody, we’re landing, we keep safety as our top priority, and it’s all calculated risk that we take in order to do these things.
Vince Trujillo: Well, thank you so much, I appreciate that. Thanks for giving me a little insight on that.
David Lujan: Absolutely.
Vince Trujillo: I’m going to give it back to Robert.
David Lujan: Absolutely.
Robert Sanchez: Thanks Vince. Yeah, so going back to talk about there’s that one incident they filmed that’s bad. You could do two or 300 incidents that are perfect, and you have that one incident they’re spinning, and then it just goes viral. That’s crazy how it works.
David Lujan: Yeah, and for us some organization that was going to happen to, and they’re the ones taking it on the chin right now. So, what we do as an organization is, we evaluate that and we learn from other people’s mistakes as well. If we ever find ourselves in that situation, we know what to do. We train on that on a daily basis. As soon as you pick your load up, let’s get forward flight as quick as possible. We try to keep it as dynamic as possible.
And we’ve worked with an air agency called Air Zermatt, they’re out of Europe in Switzerland. These guys are world renowned hoist operators, hoist specialists, pilots. These guys do just tremendous work. We’re talking 1,000 hoists in a year out there on the Matterhorn. Those individuals have come down and worked directly with us, and if anything, we found that we’ve modeled our air support unit very similar to them. Just two weeks ago, we just worked with Air Zermatt doing our night hoisting operations, and man, Oliver Kaiser, he’s just a phenomenal instructor. He’s also a US citizen too, he’s an active member of the military, but he works out in Air Zermatt.
And Patrick, I’m feeling really bad, if you guys ever want to see a great documentary, if you go to Red Bull TV and watch the series The Horn, these are the guys that we trained with. They brought in some really great techniques, and the University of New Mexico Jason Williams was actually the one that fostered that relationship with them, so that we could start training with them.
Robert Sanchez: Very nice, very nice. Again, thank you Dave for being on. I wanted to let the community know out there that enjoy the outdoors, go out and have a good time especially during this COVID time, people just want to get out. But just be prepared, think about not only your safety, but when you’re out there and firefighters and physicians on the helicopter, even sheriff deputies have to go do a rescue. It’s our honor and privilege to do it, but it also puts us at risk. So, we can minimize that risk, it’s good for you, it’s good for us. That’d be a great thing for the public to make sure that they’re prepared when they’re going on hiking trips or whatever the case may be.
Robert Sanchez: Again, thanks Dave for being on the show. Thanks for your leadership that you’ve shown to take leadership on this project for MASU. It’s always, again, every time you’re given an assignment you take it to the extreme, which is a good thing. It’s always a pleasure.
David Lujan: Absolutely, Robert. If I could say one last thing is, I’ve got to make sure to give credit where credit’s due. I really want to recognize a few people, and that’s our sheriff Manuel Gonzalez. He’s been a huge advocate for this program and this collaboration, and was part of the air unit in his past before he was actually sheriff. And then the undersheriff Larry Koren, who’s just truly the reason there is even an air unit. He was part of the inception of what started off as an air unit, which was just a fixed wing. And now what we’ve grown into to having multiple air resources.
And then our Fire Chief Greg Perez, who’s been absolutely instrumental in supporting us from the fire department side. And then the individual on the fire department side that started this collaboration with the sheriff’s department was our Deputy Chief of Operations Brian Rose. He was instrumental in makes sure that, that happened. And then even our current Deputy Chief of Administration Zach Lardy, who was actually part of the program for a short period of time there, was really great.
And then just everybody that’s been involved, but I just truly want to recognize those individuals, and then Jason Williams as well from the UNM Reach and Treat, he’s been absolutely phenomenal to work with on this collaboration. The one last thing that I have to say is that just recently this last year we went to Europe, and with this collaboration, with UNM, and we’ve basically developed a curriculum with the university, the school of medicine and this program to offer what we call an AHEMS course, and it’s Alpine Helicopter EMS. It’s kind of a branch offshoot of the Diploma of Mountain Medicine that they’re currently offering.
We’re getting ready to actually putt that first class on here in June, and we’re bringing in people from other agencies to get certification in what we do. And this curriculum’s actually been accredited by the ICAR commission, and that’s the International Commission of Alpine Rescue. None of that would have been possible without Jason Williams. What we did find out when we were out there in Europe is that we’re the only agency that is currently under this platform that’s doing something like that. So, we truly have a world-renowned resource here in Bernalillo County. It’s just something we’re super proud of, not necessarily for the pat on the back, but it’s really on the platform of everybody’s hard work that’s been through this program.
People that have come in as medics and are no longer in, and the same thing from the tactical flight officers to the sheriff’s deputies to include the pilots. Everybody has a piece of what we’ve been able to accomplish here.
Robert Sanchez: Just being fortunate enough to be a firefighter and actually see things work, the relationship that we have with the sheriff’s department or even the Albuquerque Police and Albuquerque Fire Department. The men and women who serve firefighters and law enforcement. Even the consortium with UNM, just working with them, in my opinion it’s state of the art and they’re great tools to utilize, and I think the citizens of New Mexico should be lucky and appreciate what tools or resources that are available for them, and the training out there to help them in their time of need for sure.
David Lujan: Well, thank you, Robert. We appreciate that. Thank you so much.
Robert Sanchez: What I like to say is in Firefighter Kingdom is find a charity for firefighters, any charity. We just started one on our podcast, but go ahead and give to charity helping firefighters. One thing I want to remember is you had those firefighters in Los Angeles that got burned. You watch those videos and they’re crazy, and I had a member of the public tell me just from not being educated, “So, how come they were up there? How come they just didn’t run off to that?”
Well, it’s different when you’re up there and you don’t know what’s going to happen. With training a commanding officer of the scene could actually see events happen sometimes before they do or see signs that it’s not going well. But in this particular situation there’s no signs, it just happened. Just looking at the videos on YouTube or even on the news, these firefighters got burned. So, find some charity to give to the burn units and help the firefighters out, and do some prayers and let the firefighters in LA know that we’re thinking about them, local 112 there in Los Angeles.
Just signing out from Firefighter Kingdom, I’m going to hand it over to Vince and tell him where we’re at, and to the great job he’s done giving it to… We’re going to be on… What channels are we on there Vince?
Vince Trujillo: We’re on everywhere almost, man. We’re on iTunes, go and subscribe to iTunes. Those people who have Apple devices. Even if you don’t have an Apple device, you can go and search on the internet for Apple Podcast Firefighter Kingdom. If you have Spotify app on your phone, most people do, Android or Apple, you can go and check out Firefighter Kingdom there. We’re also on the internet on Google Play. So, let’s say I don’t have any devices, I don’t even know how to do any of that stuff, you can open your internet browser, you can go to Google and search for Firefighter Kingdom, we come up on Google Play.
We’re going to be on YouTube here in the next couple of weeks. So, we’re launching a YouTube channel. We’re going to be on there, you can subscribe, you can watch the videos of all of our pretty mugs on there as well. But just from the public, thank you guys for what you do. I appreciate you being out there. It’s awesome to hear but people like Dave and Robert out there protecting us and keeping us safe, so I appreciate everything you guys do, and condolences to those in the LA fires as well. So, signing off from my end on Firefighter Kingdom, back to you Robert.
Robert Sanchez:
Cool, so don’t forget to give us five stars on those podcast devices that you’re going to listen to or actually watch on YouTube, on Facebook. And go ahead and comment on there. If you have any comments or questions, we’ll try to answer them and/or any suggestions on any guests that you’d like to see on Firefighter Kingdom. Again, signing off on Firefighter Kingdom, have a good day.
Originally published at firefighterkingdom.com on June 8, 2020.
