Episode 17 Helicopter Heroes

When you're with someone that's critically ill or injured,

every minute you wait for medical aid can feel like an hour.

Which is why a helicopter like this can be a beautiful sight.

It certainly was for me when I was a copper.

This is the Yorkshire Air Ambulance and their business is saving lives.

From the Dales to the big cities of Leeds and Sheffield, patients in the UK's biggest county

are never more than ten minutes from a hospital, thanks to this 150mph life-saver.

Every day brings a new life-or-death emergency for its team of flying paramedics.

Two helicopters, four paramedics, five million patients.

Today on Helicopter Heroes, the team face a terrible choice -

freeing a trapped driver could mean amputating his leg...

Can we rig some sort of tourniquet up?

..an usual hazard leads to a serious accident on a Pennine road...

Sheep? Don't dodge 'em, run 'em over.

..what happens when you forget to wear your seatbelt...

The police officer's just informed me he definitely did not have his seatbelt on.

..Paramedic Pat agrees to an unexpected request from an injured farmer.

I'm not used to getting false teeth out!

When I wore a uniform for a living, one of the hardest jobs was dealing with a trapped driver.

It's a terrible situation and very hard to say anything that would make the victim feel better.

On a country lane in North Yorkshire, a 26-tonne concrete mixer has left the road and turned over.

Its 39-year-old driver is trapped in his cab.

Firefighters fear that if the vehicle moves he could be crushed.

It's a mile south on one of the minor roads.

We've not got an exact road for it.

Helimed 99 has just taken off from its base at Leeds Bradford Airport.

When the victims of a road accident are trapped, the flying paramedics are always scrambled.

It's at my five o'clock. If you bring it round now...

I've got it. OK, right, thank you.

This accident has the local traffic cops scratching their heads.

It's a minor road, but the truck appears to have been travelling at high speed.

No other vehicle was involved, so why did it turn over on a bend?

Paramedics Paul Bradbury and Simon Kavanagh are about to find out.

-Has he been knocked out?

-Hasn't been unconscious. Normally fit and well. No allergies, nothing.

-Is he trapped by his leg?

-He's trapped for about 40 minutes now.

Can we isolate the battery? It's still live in here.

One thing's for sure, the driver won't be getting out in a hurry.

He's had a lucky escape.

He only has cuts and bruises, but he's firmly trapped by his lower leg.

Slow your breathing down and tell me what's hurting you?

It's just my right leg.

Keep your arms down. We'll give you some morphine.

We'll give you some morphine.

I can't see anything. One leg's all right, but it's the one underneath.

-Paul?

-Nothing.

Paramedics often strike up a close relationship with trapped patients.

In the tension of a difficult rescue operation, they often have time to hear a driver's life story.

But this patient's different. He's not giving much away.

-What's your surname?

-What's your name?

-Oh...stop it!

-OK, mate.

He says he's called Jasper, but he won't even tell them his surname.

It's very mysterious.

The fire service are using airbags and cables to raise the truck

from the roadside ditch where it came to rest.

It should release the pressure on the cab which is pinning Jasper's leg.

The paramedics appear to have stabilised the casualty.

We're trying to pull the cab over very gently to give him some room.

Apparently, there's a bar across his leg and it may just release his leg.

We've got air bags in and pulling equipment,

and we're just gradually working on it,

very gently, and chocking as we go along.

-Jasper, you're going to feel the cab moving in a minute.

-Champion.

If it hurts, tell me and I'll get these guys to stop.

Paramedic Paul is trying to help free Jasper's leg, but nothing seems to help.

What do we think it's trapped under?

Is it the actual cab that's trapping his leg?

The arm that you get for climbing on. It's got an arm.

Yeah, one of them, and it's trapped on there. Right.

The truck was delivering concrete to a building site.

It's fully laden and it won't budge.

Because it's such a heavy vehicle,

the Fire Brigade can't just rip the door off or take the roof off,

so they have to do a bit of a technical rescue.

They've inflated some airbags because he's trapped by his right leg.

The full weight of the truck is on it. We can't actually see it,

so we don't know if it's crushed or fractured.

Till we get the truck off, we don't know what we're dealing with.

One of the cable anchors has been pulled from the ground

and a farmer's powerful tractor is useless against the weight of 20 tonnes of concrete.

There's no way to get behind it to lever it.

-There must be something.

-Honestly, mate, I've tried.

The trucker is desperate, but Paul has an idea.

Have you got one of the fire lads?

Can I have a word?

What are the chances of getting a ram in there?

Do you want to nip the steering wheel off? Yeah, go on then.

The Fire Brigade bring in their hydraulic cutters.

But it seems to make little difference.

It's his bottom leg that's trapped.

The other option is to...

HE MURMURS

-There's no basics available around here?

-No.

Paul's worried. If circulation to Jasper's leg has been disrupted, releasing it could lead to

potentially lethal complications as toxic blood flows around his body.

And the longer he's trapped, the more serious it could be.

We're struggling.

We've tried every way possible now, safely, to get his leg out. We're now

going to have to get a trauma team to come out. The worst-case scenario,

we'd have to amputate his leg. But hopefully we have a few more options to try

before we go to that extreme.

Coming up, the Fire Brigade run out of options in the battle to free Jasper...

..a Bulgarian driver finds himself at the centre of a major rescue operation...

The police officer informed me he definitely did not have his seatbelt on.

..and a farmer is run over by his own tractor.

And lives to tell the tale.

You have to be tough to live on top of the Pennines.

Some of the locals tend to be a bit on the stubborn side,

which can be a problem when you have to share a narrow lane with them.

The wild and windy moors of the Pennines in West Yorkshire are a desolate place.

There's only one type of livestock that can survive in these conditions - sheep.

Yorkshire wool is still highly sought-after, and huge numbers of sheep roam the Pennines hills.

There are no fenced fields around here and sheep regularly stray onto the roads,

sometimes with dramatic consequences.

On a road running parallel to the M62 near Ripponden,

a delivery driver has swerved to avoid a flock of sheep.

His van has plunged over 50 feet down an embankment and he's trapped inside.

We're just going to set off now.

If it's serious, we'll be on the scene. We can get

to the patient once the fire service get there.

Just minutes later, Helimed 99 is speeding towards the scene.

But there's some worrying news.

Ground paramedics have arrived, but the van is in such a perilous position,

it's too dangerous for them to reach the driver.

An ambulance crew has got on the scene and deemed it too dangerous

to get in the vehicle to assess the patient.

It's a concern when you can't get to the patient. But your own personal

safety, then the safety of the casualty

is the most important thing. If you put yourself in harm's way

and you're injured, you're not able to help anybody.

The crew of Helimed 99 know this area well.

They're regularly called to accidents

on the country's highest motorway that dissects the Pennines, the M62.

From the air, it's clear this is a serious incident.

Yep, quite a steep embankment.

-Just coming down at one o'clock.

-Got it, mate.

Need to get between stanchions.

Yeah, that looks good, but that's where the pole stand,

so we might just have to play it by ear.

If we get him up that bit, we'll get him up this bit.

The van's driver, Nigel Clegg, has been thrown out of his seat

and into the back of the van, but he's been lucky.

A telegraph pole has stopped the van falling further down the embankment.

-That one?

-Yeah.

Chest injuries at the moment. C spine possible, and further down.

We'll get one off our wagon.

Fire crews have secured the van with a cable, enabling ground paramedics

to get into the back and assess Nigel's injuries.

Our main concern was that the van was unstable.

There were two members of the public in there, but we were concerned

if more weight would start dragging it down the hill.

He's obviously been freed.

He's got some chest injuries and a query C spine as well.

Nigel needs to be in hospital fast, so Tony and Darren quickly prepare the helicopter.

Let's start clearing the deck here.

As fire crews attempt a risky carry, back up the steep bank.

Heave it up as hard as you can.

All right, chief.

Nigel was trapped inside his van for over half an hour.

Now he's been released, the full extent of his injuries is now becoming clear.

Start moving him in.

'When we put this patient on the aircraft, it quickly became obvious

'that his injuries could be more significant than they appeared.'

Just have a listen at his chest.

'He complained of having a lot of difficulty breathing,'

and his oxygen saturation levels

in his body also started to drop.

Nigel, are you in a lot of pain? On a scale of one to ten, what is it?

Ahh...

Nigel is struggling to cope with the pain, but he still manages to remember how the accident happened.

It was sheep.

You were dodging sheep? Sheep? Don't dodge 'em, run 'em over.

Still getting a little bit there, but respiratory effort is poor.

The paramedic on scene said he'd had difficulty

in hearing the breath sounds on the right side of the patient's chest.

I checked it again and asked Tony to confirm it, and it was obvious that

the breath sounds on that side were significantly diminished.

There's a possibility that the lung on that side of the chest was collapsing or had collapsed.

This is potentially a life-threatening situation.

-Nigel, I'm going to give you something for this pain.

-Oh, thank you!

When this pain is taken away, I'll put a needle into your chest and it'll help your breathing.

You'll feel a stab in your right hand, OK?

Well done.

Listen, Nigel, this is going to be painful.

All right, but it can't hurt any more than it does now,

-and it might relieve the pressure in your chest. Are you listening to me?

-Yes.

Nigel's condition is deteriorating and he's struggling to breathe.

He needs a surgical procedure usually done by a doctor in hospital to relieve pressure in his chest.

But there's no time.

Darren must decompress Nigel's chest, and fast.

Coming up, Darren prepares for a life-saving operation at the roadside...

..the team send for reinforcements in the battle to free a trapped driver...

Basically, a doctor, an anaesthetist and a surgeon,

just in case we need to amputate his leg.

..and cardiac-nurse-turned-paramedic Tony Wilkes flies to the rescue

after a pig farmer is struck down by a heart attack.

Most people have a driving licence.

But these days, there's no guarantee that the driver in front of you took his test in the UK.

Sometimes, that makes a difference.

It comes out onto the A19.

How many casualties, four?

There's four patients, there's one trapped.

This morning, there's a race to get Helimed 99 off the ground.

VOICES ON RADIO

York's ancient Minster was built almost 1,000 years ago,

but it is very popular with today's tourists.

And pilots.

It can be seen from 50 miles away on a clear day,

which means Helimed 99's crew are never short of a landmark when they're called to the city.

There's been a serious shunt on the A19,

the main route north from York to industrial Teesside.

Four vehicles involved and we believe

there is a number of casualties, one of which is still trapped.

They're already thinking which hospital to fly to.

For the A19, York will be our first choice

unless there's an isolated head injury.

We'll assess when we get on scene.

With the road blocked and traffic backed up for miles,

emergency crews know the chopper is the only way to get the victim to hospital quickly.

Paramedics Sammy Wills and Pete Vallance are here to care

for one driver who's more seriously injured than the others.

Lacerations. No central neck or back pain

in either of these two gentlemen, just a bit of arm pain.

27-year-old Vince is a Bulgarian working in the UK.

How old are you?

His hatchback stood up well to the impact with a road sign,

which is more than you can say for its driver.

You're normally fit and well?

The accident has happened at a busy junction on a fast, straight section of the A19.

The white van, we believe, was waiting to turn right.

He's been struck by another car, which in turn has pushed it into the black car.

This is how we found it when we got here.

The drivers of the other two vehicles have escaped with minor injuries,

but Vince has some nasty wounds to his head and face.

He's also injured his knees and his chest.

When you look at the damage to the car, that's a high impact.

He'll come with us, purely because of

the mechanism, the speed and the damage to his car.

Paramedics Sammy and Pete are puzzled.

Vince suffered the same impact as two other motorists, but came off much worse.

The Fire Brigade are having to cut Vince out.

He's trapped by the twisted steering wheel and he appears to have hit the windscreen.

The fire crew are just making us a path

through all the trip hazards, and all appears well.

It's feared Vince may also have damaged his neck.

Can I take head from there? Vince, let us just ease you...?

Can somebody get round his waist and slide him up as though he's on a bench?

He'll be gently removed from his seat to avoid worsening any injury.

Great stuff. Cheers, guys.

The reason for Vince's condition soon becomes clear.

He didn't learn to drive in the UK, so he missed out on a vital safety precaution.

The police officer informed me he did not have his seatbelt on, so that makes a huge difference

to where his injuries will be.

The Helimed pilots aren't just there to fly the helicopter.

When they're on the ground, they become medical photographers.

The plan for me is to get photos of the accident

for the hospital, so they can see the type of impact in case that helps them.

Then we'll be off to Harrogate.

A five-minute flight, and straight in there.

Paramedics used to see injuries like this all the time before seatbelts were made compulsory.

That's why he's got so much glass in his forehead.

Usually, your seatbelt would keep you back.

It makes a difference on the steering wheel, which bit hits him and where.

Vince is lucky. He's off for a full check-up at the hospital in Harrogate.

It looks like his car was travelling backwards when it hit the road sign.

That could explain why his injuries weren't even more serious.

His seat and headrest probably took most of the impact.

We'll get you to hospital.

In accidents like today's, paramedics are trained to seek

out the patient, like Vince, who most needs their skills.

With several casualties there, you've got to find the most seriously injured

before you can start treating anyone. It's no good to go rushing in,

find the first one and start treating them,

because basic treatment can save someone's life.

If you assess properly, in triage, you can make sure the people who need the treatment first get it.

Despite Vince's relatively lucky escape,

you won't find many paramedics driving without seatbelts.

Sammy sees every day how they save lives.

And, too often, how people die without them.

People that don't wear seatbelts take a great risk.

It's quite an old-fashioned injury now, to go to patients that have not

been wearing seatbelts, given that it's the law.

If this patient had been wearing a seatbelt, it's likely he'd have

been one of the walking wounded, like the others.

Thankfully, Vince recovered and now wears a seatbelt.

Coming up, paramedic Darren has to tell a forgetful patient how his accident happened...

-What happened?

-Yeah.

-You were avoiding sheep.

..and what happens when things go wrong down on the farm.

On a minor road in North Yorkshire, the emergency services are trying

to make sense of an accident which left a 38-year-old trucker trapped in his upturned lorry.

On a country lane in North Yorkshire,

a lorry driver has been trapped in his cab for more than an hour.

The man told paramedic Paul Bradbury he's called Jasper,

but for some reason he's reluctant to give his surname.

What Paul is not telling him is that he may lose his leg if

the Fire Brigade can't work out a way of freeing him soon.

-He's been trapped too long now.

-Yeah.

We're trying to push

the bodywork off his leg but it's just not happening, unfortunately.

As I said, hopefully, we'll be able to do it. But as a last resort,

and it's a last resort, we may have to look at amputation.

The flying paramedics have sent pilot Paul Curtis off to pick up

a surgeon and an anaesthetist from Harrogate Hospital.

Their job will be to amputate Jasper's leg where he lies.

Can we rig some sort of tourniquet up, so I can at least get it round?

Yes, how much do you want?

Just... Just sort of round his thigh.

Only one thing can save the driver's right leg.

The Fire Brigade have tried airbags and winches to ease the pressure,

but the lorry was fully laden with 20 tonnes of concrete and it won't budge.

Jasper has drained two cylinders of Entonox, a pain-killing gas,

on top of the strongest drugs the paramedics carry.

-Paul?

-Nothing.

I know, when you're a copper, you get a hunch about some accidents.

The local traffic officers are clearly not happy about this crash.

The driver is reluctant even to give them his second name.

And this is a minor road. The truck was clearly travelling pretty fast to come off the road on a bend.

The primary concern is to find out what happened. Obviously, he's been trapped quite a long time now

and it raises concerns for me and my colleagues.

An accident investigation team is on the way.

But for now, all that matters is getting Jasper out.

Pilot Paul Curtis is flying in the trauma team, and they're almost ready to start work.

Basically, a doctor,

anaesthetist and a surgeon, just in case we need to amputate his leg.

When we left, we didn't know how bad a leg injury he's got,

so I nipped over to Harrogate and picked up two doctors and a nurse.

Hopefully they can add a different dimension to the care he's been getting already.

This is the Fire Brigade's last chance to save Jasper's leg.

This time, they're trying brute force.

This chain is forcing the steering column away from the driver's leg.

One, two, three...

And it's worked!

Jasper can at last move his leg.

The surgical team's skills may not now be needed,

but trapped patients can suffer lethal complications even after they are freed.

-This is Jasper.

-Yes.

His right foot has been trapped for about an hour-and-a-half. He's had 20 of morphine.

His pain is all right, it's acceptable.

He's not been knocked out. He's come round the corner and lost it.

Lorry's tipped over and trapped him. In the last three minutes, we've managed to free it a bit.

I've tourniqueted it at the top, but it's been an hour-and-a-half now.

We should get a spinal board down the back and secure him to it while he's still upright.

The thing is, once he is released, that's when the clock starts ticking if he has a crush injury.

Will the 90 minutes Jasper has spent pinned to his seat cause lasting damage?

He could still lose his leg.

Coming up, the surgeons waiting.

It's the last chance to save Jasper's leg...

..and a farm worker has fallen 25 foot while repairing a roof.

Now, he needs Helimed 99's help.

One minute, he was there. The next, he wasn't.

Paramedics are highly trained, but they're not doctors.

Sometimes, they find themselves having to perform complicated procedures or lose a patient.

On a road in the Pennines, that's exactly what's happened to medic Darren Axe.

The van has plummeted over 50 feet down an embankment.

The driver, Nigel Clegg, swerved to avoid a flock of sheep

and was trapped in the back of the van for over 30 minutes.

Helimed 99 arrives just in time.

Fire crews have managed to get Nigel out safely and carry him to the helicopter.

Nigel, are you in a lot of pain? On a scale of one to ten, what is it?

Ahh...

But he has a serious chest injury. Paramedic Darren Axe has to perform

one of the most complicated and risky medical procedures.

This will be painful, all right? But it can't hurt more than it does now

-and it might relieve the pressure in your chest. Are you listening to me?

-Yeah.

Air is escaping from Nigel's right lung.

With nowhere for the air to go, pressure is building up in Nigel's chest cavity.

If the lung collapses and the cavity fills up with air outside the lung,

there is a possibility it will crush the other structures.

It will put pressure on the heart, it forces the windpipe across

and could, potentially, put the patient into cardiac arrest.

-Oh!

-Is that hurting you?

-Yes.

It might seem crude, but Darren has to insert a large needle into Nigel's chest.

If he's just a centimetre out, the procedure won't work.

-Oh, Jesus.

-OK, that's it, now, mate, it's done.

It's one of the more high-risk procedures that paramedics carry out,

so you must be certain of what you're doing and you must be committed

to making sure you've got everything right and it's in the right place.

-Take a breath, Nigel.

-Ah!

-Oh, yes.

-Ah!

-It sounds a bit better to me now.

I can hear it now and I couldn't before.

Darren's done it. The needle is positioned

in exactly the right place and air begins to flow out of the valve.

It is now a lot easier for Nigel to breathe, but he's still in a huge amount of pain.

Is it less or is it still bad?

It's still bad.

Right, take nice easy breaths for us, Nigel and the pain will start to ease off a bit. Are you with me?

It also appears Nigel suffered concussion and he needs Darren to remind him how the crash happened.

-What happened?

-What happened?

-Yeah.

-You were avoiding sheep.

It were either that or a fluffy rock.

-OK, mate, we're going to go off to hospital now, all right?

-Yes.

I'm going to move him down a bit, Tone.

Darren can't relax yet.

Nigel's body has suffered a huge impact and internal injuries

must be monitored carefully as patients can deteriorate quickly.

I've attempted to release that pressure and reinflate that lung before it collapses too far.

His pain has reduced somewhat

and his breathing seems to have settled down a lot now.

He's got good saturation levels.

So we'll get him off and checked in resus.

The cause of the accident is the hot topic

of conversation for Helimed 99's crew.

He said he was dodging sheep, which I can well believe, looking at where he was.

It's not the closest hospital to where Nigel had his accident,

but the Leeds General Infirmary is a specialist trauma centre

and can give him the expert care he needs.

He'll have a lot of blood tests, X-rays, examinations

by the doctors and nursing staff.

Obviously the forces generated from that kind of accident, he's been thrown about in the vehicle,

so the forces generated can easily cause spinal injuries, back injuries.

Three weeks later and Nigel is still in hospital.

His list of injuries included a fractured neck, five broken ribs and collapsed lungs.

The sheep he avoided has caused a lot of pain.

It was just instinct just to avoid the thing.

I mean, I didn't recognise it

at first as a sheep, it was just something ran out in front of you.

It's only when you think about it a few seconds later you realise, "Oh, that were a sheep."

Nigel remembers very little about his accident

but he is aware that the outcome could have been very different.

People have shown me pictures of what I looked like when I'd just

had the accident and I've seen pictures of the van and, wow, I am lucky, very lucky.

He's grateful to the emergency services

who helped get him off the hillside and into the hospital so quickly.

And he has some words of warning for the sheep.

It's not going to survive next time!

Coming up, the truth behind a major accident emerges in court...

If you live out in the countryside, it's good it know that one of these

things is waiting if you really need it.

Working the land is a dangerous job and if you're hurt or taken ill on a farm,

you can be a long way from hospital.

No wonder farmers are among the Air Ambulance's most regular patients.

Today, there's been a 999 call from a remote hill farm high in the Pennines.

That is homing in on Crow Hill Farm.

An emergency flight to an isolated fell involves careful planning if they are not to miss their patient.

Nearly 2,000 feet up, near Ripponden, farmer Derek Cox has been run over by his own tractor.

He's 77 years old and badly injured.

His chest has been crushed. His daughter dialled 999.

Helimed 98 is cruising at 150 miles an hour and paramedic Pat knows Derek's life is in danger.

Crush injuries, you could have cardiac tamponade

which is blood around the heart which stops the heart pumping.

You're looking at lung problems - collapsed lungs,

injuries to the lungs. Derek could be having difficulty from his breathing.

Definitely a time-critical patient.

It's quite an awkward spot to find so bear with me.

The trouble is, the wild landscape that inspired the Bronte sisters,

tends to look the same from 3,000 feet

and the crew of Helimed 98 are having difficulty finding their patient.

Chris was confident it's Crow Road Farm.

-There's lot of farmers.

-Somebody is moving their arms around down there.

-Where?

The emergency services on the ground are having the same problem.

At last, Steve spots Derek lying beside his 40-year-old tractor.

Hill farmers are a tough breed.

You'd never know Derek is in agony after a tonne of tractor rolled over him.

-The big one or the small one?

-The big one.

-It went directly over the centre of your chest?

-Yes.

-How does your breathing feel?

-Well, it hurts like.

-Yes.

But Pat knows he's in trouble.

Even with blue lights, it's taken the ground ambulance crew and the police 20 minutes to reach

the lonely farm along a torturous series of winding lanes.

It's a return journey Derek can't afford to take.

We're going to take you to hospital in the helicopter.

-You might have collapsed your lung this side, right?

-Yep.

Hill farming is a precarious business and despite his pain, Derek is in no mood

to lose any of his hard-earned personal possessions.

I'm not used to getting false teeth out!

The false teeth have been saved, but there is no reprieve for Derek's prized coat.

How many layers have you got on?

He was wrapped up warm when the accident happened

and it is possible all those layers saved his life by protecting his chest from the tractor wheel.

According to family folklore, Derek hasn't left his farm, high in the Pennines, since he was a teenager.

Ready, steady, move.

Unfortunately his life now depends on him leaving

the dale were he has lived and worked for more than 70 years.

Bring it round.

Derek is a 77-year-old chap who has been run over

by the large wheel of a tractor.

Apart from blood pressure problems,

he's normally fit and well and we'll take him to Huddersfield.

He's got crush injuries to his chest and air in wrong place.

Hence we're being quick.

Derek was in hospital within 20 minutes and doctors managed to repair the injuries to his chest.

He's one of around 1,200 farmers who will be injured at work this year.

It is one of the UK's most dangerous industries.

Last year, 34 people were killed.

But it is a stressful job too and when a farmer is hit by a serious illness, like a heart attack,

the time it takes to get to hospital can mean

he is less likely to recover than someone from the city.

Today, in North Yorkshire, the chopper is coming to the rescue

of a pig farmer who has collapsed at work.

Alan has been suffering from agonising chest pains.

They've touched down at an isolated farm near the market town of Thirsk.

A ground crew called in Helimed 99 after an ECG machine

showed the signs of a heart attack.

You're pointing slightly over to your right side.

Yes. Nothing like it.

Yes, it sounds classic. Let me start unhooking you.

Alan is feeling much better but he needs urgent treatment

if the crew are to minimise the damage to his heart muscle.

It brought you to your knees. Have you been feeling sick?

Alan is in good hands. On today's crew is Tony, who is a former cardiac nurse.

He will be helping make sure he gets the best treatment as quickly as possible.

It looks like he's having a heart attack.

The signs and symptoms definitely present as such and the ECG.

The crew have done a great job.

They've done the clinical intubations and pre-arranged a bed for him up at James Cook.

So it's a case of monitoring him and getting him up there as soon as possible.

What we'd like to do it is pop you on this chair.

We want to keep you at ease as much as possible.

Alan is on oxygen, but wearing a mask has its drawbacks when you have the sniffles.

-Kitchen roll.

-How big is his nose?

-Thank you.

-There we go.

Alan's work mates have done the right thing.

Ignoring chest pains can kill.

Are you happy if I disappear and get everything ready?

We're just going up over the step.

Ready, steady...

Are you all right there?

-You must be a strong girl!

-I've had my Weetabix this morning.

The farming business stops for nothing, even the boss's heart attack.

The pigs still need feeding.

We're looking at an ETA of about 15 minutes.

Alan had been helping to lift some heavy gas cylinders when his symptoms started.

I put two big propane cylinders in the back of my Land Rover

and...just straightaway, very tight pains.

The sooner they can get their patients to hospital, the better his chances of a full recovery.

Long hours of hard, physical work and the stress of running your own business

can put farmers at high risk of heart attacks. So Alan is not going to his local hospital.

He will be flown another 20 miles to a specialist coronary care unit at Middlesbrough.

For this gentleman, his nearest hospital in a straight line, would be Harrogate.

Because we think he's having a heart attack,

the most appropriate hospital is James Cook, where he can receive angioplasty.

Angioplasty is the most modern treatment for heart attacks.

Surgeons will literally clean out the blocked blood vessels around Alan's heart.

There's only a few centres around the UK that do this, one of them is James Cook.

As far as heart attacks are concerned,

basically your heart muscles are deteriorating minute-by-minute until you have the treatment.

So the quicker we can get this patient to hospital and into the angio suite,

the better the outcome will be for the patient.

The team are flying Alan directly to a helipad at the front door of James Cook Hospital.

Within an hour, surgeons will be operating under local anaesthetic,

and tomorrow he will be going home to the farm.

When home is ten miles from the nearest DIY shop, self-sufficiency becomes a way of life.

Last year, more farm workers were killed falling from farm buildings

than in accidents involving agricultural machinery.

Today, Helimed 99 is airborne over the rolling fields of East Yorkshire

to a worker who has had a serious fall.

He's sustained some leg injuries, possibly pelvic injuries

and he's got a wound to his head.

It's quite a substantial distance to fall and for that energy to be

transferred through his legs.

Something has to give and it looks like his right leg and possibly his pelvis may be fractured.

Charles slipped while doing some roofing and landed on a concrete floor.

The ground ambulance crew called in the helicopter

because the accident happened a long drive from the nearest A&E unit.

This gentleman fell approximately 25 feet through an asbestos roof

and landed on his heels, then obviously onto the concrete.

Charles's work mates are stunned.

We were just both working together

and one minute he was there and next minute he wasn't.

Charles is in pain and may need surgery.

As far as I can make out, he's possibly injured his pelvis.

Possibly his right femur and he has a head injury as well.

Charles has been given morphine but the Helimed crew are used to needing

fewer painkillers when they're working out in the country.

These farming people tend to be quite tough,

and I don't think Charles is any exception to that rule

because his pain is reduced and he's not complaining.

I've not given him any further. I don't want to mask anything for when we get to hospital.

Within a few minutes of leaving a field next to the building where he fell,

Charles is arriving at Hull Royal Infirmary's trauma centre.

I'm glad to say that all three of our farming patients are all on the mend.

Now, let's catch up on that tense operation to free a trapped lorry driver in North Yorkshire.

A 90-minute rescue operation on a country road has had its first success.

Thanks to brute force and a Fire Brigade chain,

a trucker called Jasper can, at last, move his trapped leg.

But paramedics Paul and Simon know their patient is not out of trouble yet.

We're trying to reduce the risk by putting a tourniquet on his leg,

which is a risk in itself, but you have to trade these things off.

We have to see what happens when we get the leg out.

There's no blood pouring out everywhere, so we're not on the clock that way,

but we'll just have to see when it comes out.

Jasper's 26-tonne concrete truck has presented firefighters with a terrible problem.

It is so heavy, all attempts to right it have failed.

But now they face a new challenge - manoeuvring Jasper out of his cab without causing further injury.

One, two, three.

Ah! Ah! Whoa, whoa, whoa...

There's some plastic here now.

There's certainly no shortage of manpower.

We've got more doctors here than at Holby!

At last, the driver is hoisted through the windscreen.

He's been lucky. His leg injuries appear to be minor.

Paramedics feared his lower leg had been crushed.

The doc looking at his leg. It's quite swollen.

There's no obvious fractures sticking out or anything like that.

They're happy to go to Harrogate District with him

so we're just going to get our stuff and get going.

The surgeon is checking him out now before we leave.

The police are suspicious about this accident and an investigation has already begun.

They've already found the answer to one mystery, the driver's name.

-Are you

-BLEEP BLEEP?

-I certainly am.

-Right, that's fine, that's all I need to know.

Hup!

It's been one of the longest rescue operations the Helimed team have ever tackled.

The paramedics are delighted that the outcome they feared

a few minutes ago did not become a reality.

At the end of the day, I would rather the medical team have amputated

his leg than we had a dead patient.

But thankfully we've not had to do that and we managed to release him.

I think he's just got...

Well, hopefully just minor abrasions and bruising to his lower leg.

He must have some fractures in his foot,

but other than that, he's an extremely lucky gentleman.

-What's going to happen now, Jasper?

-Can you take this off?

No, honestly, trust me. You've got it on for ten minutes, that's it.

In a few minutes, Jasper will be receiving specialist care at Harrogate Hospital.

It is nearly two hours since his crash.

Tests confirm that his injuries, though painful, were relatively minor.

But he won't be forgetting his accident in a hurry.

A year later, Jasper has an important appointment with justice.

Unbelievably, just ten months before the crash,

he'd lost his licence for three years for failing to take a breath test.

Jasper was given a two-year suspended sentence.

The chairman of the Magistrates told him he was lucky no-one was killed in the accident.

That's all from Helicopter Heroes.

But when we come back, a teenage boy is accidentally shot by his dad...

It's gone in here.

I'm not sure if the bullet is still in.

..They're in the middle of sitting their A-levels,

but the drive home has ended in agony for three sixth formers...

It went on the water. I couldn't get it to stop.

..A biker must be seriously injured, but where is he?

-He's stuck in a tree where?

-Here.

-Over the fence.

..and an accident with a bonfire leaves a woman badly burnt.

They chucked an aerosol can on to it and it exploded into her.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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