A Tennessee Army National Guard medical flight crew responded to an emergency air evacuation mission for a hiker with a suspected broken leg in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park area, Friday, Oct. 14.
At approximately 4:20 p.m., the Tennessee Military Department and Tennessee Emergency Management Agency were notified of a hiker needing evacuation along the Alum Cave Trail, south of Gatlinburg, requiring immediate medical care.
A UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter from the Tennessee National Guard’s Detachment 1, Company C, 1-171st Aviation Regiment, based in Knoxville, assembled in less than 40 minutes, and launched to the incident site at approximately 5:00 p.m.
At 5:22 p.m., the aircraft arrived at the hiker’s location on Alum Cave Trail. Rescuers were then lowered to the ground by hoist, where they performed a medical assessment on the injured hiker. Once complete, the hiker was medically stabilized, and then hoisted into the hovering helicopter.
Once onboard, the flight crew continued medical aid while enroute to the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville. The hiker was safely delivered to the hospital after a 12-minute flight.
(Col. Robert Ross, a fight surgeon for the Tennessee National Guard, helps offload the patient from a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter at the University of Tennessee Medical Center helicopter pad in Knoxville, Oct. 14. Photo from the Tennessee National Guard)
