Episode 10 Helicopter Heroes

If you're seriously ill or critically injured, every second counts.

Especially if you're up high or off the beaten track.

But thanks to these guys,

the people of the UK's biggest county

are never more than ten minutes away from a hospital.

The Yorkshire air ambulance can do 150 miles an hour

and every day brings a new life-or-death emergency.

Five million people depend on these yellow helicopters

to bring life-saving care from the skies.

When a pile-up closes Britain's highest motorway

or there's a serious accident on the shop floor,

the paramedics and pilots of the Helimed team

are there to rescue the casualties.

Today on Helicopter Heroes:

there are seven patients and only two helicopters

as a people carrier crashes.

We've got three that are priority one, one of whom is trapped under the vehicle.

The team are called to a climbing accident. A medical student is badly hurt.

He went, "No, it's not broken." I went, "Yes, it's broken!"

A visit to Gran's ends in pain for an adventurous five-year-old.

Tell all your mates at school.

And if laughter is the best medicine,

this patient is treating herself!

-Do you take any drugs or anything?

-Ooh, no!

-No medicine at all?

She is conscious. Is she breathing?

This control room is one of two covering 6,000 square miles

from the deserted moors and dales

to the packed streets of Leeds and Sheffield.

They have 61 ambulance stations to keep busy.

But sometimes even that's not enough.

A people carrier has crashed off the M62 near Leeds and into a field.

The report is we're going to the M62 westbound.

Reports of a car crash where somebody's been ejected.

Eight members of the same family - mum, dad and six children -

are all badly injured.

At least one person has been thrown from the vehicle

and another is trapped.

Hello!

You two all been in the same car?

Do you mind doing me a favour? Just lie down for me, sir.

Can I just lay this lady down as well?

-Just lie down gently.

-Keep your head still.

Come on. It's OK.

With so many casualties, the first thing Sammy Wills and the other medics have to do

is establish who has the most serious injuries.

-Have you done this lady?

-Yes.

Stay there. Shout me if you need any more help.

The whole family needs to be taken to hospital.

So dispatcher Dave Gardiner decides to deploy a second helicopter.

Helimed 98 is now on its way to join Helimed 99.

'To land behind Helimed 99. Over.'

Roger. Received. 269259 and land behind Helimed 99. Got any further update? Over.

'Yes. Two serious.

'Four other patients. Six casualties in all and one still trapped under.'

It's almost unheard of for two helicopters to attend the same incident.

Especially when only one car is involved.

But these are exceptional circumstances.

The Ibrahin Patel family were on their way home to Leicester

after visiting relatives, when a tyre blew.

Dad Habiz lost control and skidded off the road.

So when the fire service come, him first.

We've got 98 en route. How many more resources have you asked for?

We'll have to scratch your arm with a blood test. OK, sweetheart?

Well done, petal.

As Lee and Sammy treat patients on the ground,

they have to cope with the powerful down-draught generated by Helimed 98 as it lands.

If you could assess this lady with this ambulance man.

Just introduce yourself, if you would.

Two off-duty doctors have stopped to help,

adding to the rapidly expanding team from emergency services.

-The gentlemen behind you are neurologists.

-Excellent.

They're going to assess there.

Paramedics Al and Paul from Helimed 98 are now on the ground.

Walk and talk. We've got five down here, all out of the same car.

One with a trapped arm, which is for you.

Still pinned and the fire service are on scene.

Six family members are lying clear of the car.

But 16-year-old Mohammed Sula-udin is trapped.

The people carrier has rolled onto his arm,

pinning him to the ground.

We've got three that are priority one at the moment,

one of whom is head and probably back injury.

One is trapped under the vehicle with femur, arm and head injury.

One has an abdominal injury and she's shocked.

Fire officers are on their way with the specialist equipment needed

to get him out. Meanwhile,

his mother and one of his sisters will be flown to hospital.

We're doing a quick triage,

highlighted the ones that need treating straightaway.

We'll send them to the nearest hospitals.

There's two or three more that in our eyes

are all right to wait a few minutes.

So we'll get the ones we need to take, get them off to hospital.

Then the other one is going to go to LGI and land on the helipad at the head injuries unit.

14-year-old Sufura is a priority

because medics believe she has serious spinal injuries.

She's conscious, but in pain.

It also looks like she's broken her left hand.

Thanks to the powerful engines of Helimed 98, Pinderfields Hospital near Wakefield

is just a five-minute flight away.

16-year-old Mohammed is the most seriously injured.

But he can't be moved until the car is rolled off his arm.

Meanwhile, five other members of his family are being prepared for their journey to hospital.

Helimed 99 is ready to go

and Helimed 98 will soon be on its way back to pick up another casualty.

Coming up: Yet another victim of the accident is found in the undergrowth.

Do you feel sick?

A biker's hurt, but someone else needs the chopper more.

A kiddy who has a fractured femur, the crew are requesting us for morphine.

And a rider is crushed by her own horse.

-It hurts!

-What hurts, your leg?

A little medical knowledge can save a life.

But when you're hurt and you know how serious it is,

it can make the experience even more frightening.

They may be based in south Yorkshire's biggest city,

but many of the Sheffield helicopter's calls are to the 555 square miles

of national park that is the Peak District.

At weekends, it's an adventure playground to walkers, runners, climbers

and occasionally fallers.

Rachel Tackash has taken a tumble

after something called "bouldering", climbing up leftovers from the Ice Age.

This is the University of Birmingham mountaineering club.

We were up today for a bouldering trip. Christmas bouldering.

It's all gone a bit wrong, really.

Her ankle is badly broken.

But this woman knows better than most

how serious her injury could be.

We're heading to a detail just outside Matlock.

It's a 20-year-old female. She's fallen. We're not sure on her injuries.

-I want to see what it looks like.

-It's brilliant.

-Oh, my God.

Rachel is well aware of the severity of her injuries.

She's a medical student and is about to start working the wards as a doctor.

She's hurt, cold, and in one of the most demanding areas on 98's patch.

Access can quite often cause a problem.

For a start, people often can't give an exact location to where they are.

So you could get ambulances running up and down

going round and about in an area looking for an access point

and not having an exact location to track it down.

-They're all waving at us. Bang on.

-There's some big rocks there.

I'll kick off this side, mate.

Oh, dear, it's full of stones.

It's all muddy.

-What's new?

-Yeah.

A road ambulance has made it to the scene,

but the added capability of the heli-medics is always welcome.

We might be best passing over the wall. It might be drier.

-Hi, guys.

-Hello.

-Hello, down there.

Paramedics Pete Vallance and Lee Gray find Rachel in relatively high spirits.

At this point, they have no idea how bad the injury may be.

But they're about to find out.

She just slipped and landed on her ankle.

But Dexie caught her, kind of!

My left foot just cracked.

A little crack on there.

And I went down funny on it.

First thing you said, "It's broken."

He went, "No, it's not broken." I went, "Yes, broken!"

Definitely broken.

Rachel's ankle took the full force of the fall.

Her foot is now partially amputated.

She's fallen and sustained a nasty compound fracture to her ankle.

She's being remarkably brave about the injury.

-It isn't stopping the pain that much.

-It's not?

It might be because there's more pain and I'm not feeling it.

Rachel may be being unbelievably resilient,

but this is an horrific injury

and she's getting the maximum pain relief a paramedic carries - morphine.

-How's the pain at the moment, Rachel?

-All right.

How's all right out of ten?

About eight.

There's a lot of soft tissue damage.

We have to be really careful out in the elements it doesn't get infected.

So we gave it a really good rinse with sterile water

and got it dressed quickly.

This is an injury that may mean Rachel will never walk the same again.

The paramedics now face a tough decision.

They want to straighten her leg and splint it to prevent further damage.

But will Rachel, brave as she is, be able to cope with the pain

when her ankle is pushed back into place?

Coming up: hospital doctors prepare to treat Rachel's complicated break.

The emergency services are stretched to the limit by a motorway smash.

And a holidaymaker needs treatment after borrowing a horse.

The UK has a network of air ambulances.

But sometimes, one chopper covers an area with a population of several million.

That means sometimes they have to decide

which patient most needs help from the skies.

On a moorland road in Wensleydale,

the crew of Helimed 99 have been called to a bike accident.

Right, sweetheart, I'm going to check your neck. Don't look up. Just relax.

For paramedics Kate Coughlin and Tony Wilkes, this is the first motorcycle accident of the year.

The Christmas snow has only just melted up here.

-It's not comfy, Tom, but it's doing its job, all right?

-All right.

The young biker swerved to avoid a car, skidded on ice

and came off his off-road bike.

Luckily, his mates were following him.

I'd been to drop a friend off up there.

We saw a bike up the hill and we thought it was him. He was in quite a lot of pain.

So we wrapped him up.

This is one of the most remote areas of Yorkshire.

But the local ground paramedics turn out in force.

There's plenty of medical help.

The biker has had some spiritual comfort too, thanks to the local vicar.

He was laid in the road and the guys were stood with him.

I just wondered if he was OK, basically,

so I stopped and stayed with him till you guys came.

You're doing well, Tom. Two minutes, love.

The biker is not badly hurt,

but in a separate accident 20 miles up the road, someone else is.

'As soon as possible. Over.'

A kiddy has a fractured femur. The crew are requesting morphine.

The helimed team don't often leave patients.

But a five-year-old boy in extreme pain

means the biker must go by road.

'The address is Honeypot Road,

'and that's Brompton-on-Swale.'

Tony knows the medics on scene in the army town of Catterick

don't have morphine, the most powerful painkiller in the ambulance service's armour.

Tony has plenty of morphine, but it's a dangerous drug

and in young children, an overdose can be lethal.

Tony's confirming the dosage.

I've got a bearing of 044.

-Yep. Nine miles.

-Yep.

Little more than five minutes after leaving one patient,

they're circling the home of another.

Right, if you're happy, I'm going to put you in the cemetery.

Their landing pad may be a little unusual,

but at least it's close to their patient.

Tony and Kate don't often do house calls when they're on helicopter duty.

But today they are.

An accident outside his gran's bungalow has left little Ben Snowdon in severe pain.

-This is Ben.

-Hiya, Ben.

-How are you doing?

He's five years old. He was outside in his wellies and there's all that green gunk after the snow.

He just slipped backwards. I heard a thud.

Dad's carried him in, screaming.

Ben's femur, the biggest bone in his body, is badly broken.

His foot is pointing in the wrong direction.

Does it hurt anywhere else, other than your leg?

Neighbours saw him slip on concrete and fall while playing.

-Oh, there, look.

-There's the skid marks there.

An accident like this would reduce an adult to tears,

but Ben is remarkably brave.

I'm going to put some medicine in you now and take the pain off a bit.

-We're going to give you a bit at a time.

-It's in my arm.

-Can you feel it tickling?

-No.

Ben's dad Steven is keeping him calm. He's doing a great job.

The morphine will help, too.

OK. You tell us how it's hurting.

If it hurts too, too much, we'll stop, OK?

Tony and Kate know this is a bad break.

It's extremely unusual to see children with injuries like this

after such a minor accident.

-You're doing really well.

-Here we go. Well done.

They're trying to protect the blood flow to Ben's foot

by fitting his leg into a box splint.

But he can't bear it. They'll have to use a flexible splint instead.

He'll be much more comfortable.

You'll feel it against your leg, Ben, but it's all right.

Tony's turning Ben's flight to hospital into an adventure.

I seen a helicopter fly once.

Do you fancy a ride in one?

Yeah? Are you going to come with us for a little fly?

His persuasive skills are working.

Ben can't wait.

Wheee!

-We're going to lift your good leg.

-Not your bad one.

Normally, they'd strap Ben to a rigid stretcher,

but his bent leg means they can't do that.

You're doing really well!

He's carried out of the bedroom and through the kitchen to the land ambulance

for a short drive to Helimed 99.

Are you warm enough, sweetheart?

Ben's never flown in a chopper before.

The excitement - and the morphine - are taking his mind off the pain.

The angle the femur was out, it was difficult to get in a box splint.

It was causing him a lot of pain.

So we've ended up using a different type of splint

which has caused less distress to him.

He seems quite comfortable at the moment.

His mum's going too.

I know it all looks very dramatic.

Are you all right?

Ben, you're on the move, my love.

By air, the James Cook hospital is just 15 minutes from Ben's home.

Tony knows keeping kids smiling helps everyone.

-Are we flying?

-Yeah, we're flying!

Can you see a little bit? Yeah?

Is your leg feeling a bit better now?

It's not as painful?

No. OK.

There's not many kiddies who get to fly in a helicopter, is there?

Have to tell all your mates at school.

We're coming in to land now,

so you'll feel yourself going down a bit. OK?

There you go, matey. He's a good driver!

Did you enjoy that?

-Aye, he's a star patient.

-Good lad.

The seriousness of Ben's injury has surprised some of the team.

It's about to do the same for hospital doctors.

Ben needs surgery to his leg.

The complicated fracture is put down to a combination of his wellies

and the angle at which he fell.

His mum certainly won't be forgetting that day in a hurry.

Even a few weeks later, with Ben safely home,

it's a painful memory.

The snow and ice had all gone. The path was all wet, wasn't it?

He ran in his wellies just from the garden lawn

onto the path,

slipped with his right foot and got his left caught

in-between the lawn and the path.

Because his boot was caught, it just twisted and broke his thigh bone.

And it hurt!

A lot.

It's been a long four weeks for Mum,

trying to entertain a boisterous five-year-old

who's unable to walk because of the steel pins in his leg.

Because he's not at school, he has to do his schoolwork

-for a few hours each day.

-Boring, boring, boring!

Then he has a schoolteacher in every day for an hour.

-Then we just...

-A whole hour!

-Then we go for a walk in the afternoon, don't we?

-Yep.

And we do your art and drawing and numbers and letters in the morning.

-Yep.

-Luckily he is the way he is!

He just shrugs his shoulders and gets on with it.

-Yep.

-Don't do that!

Coming up: a medical student finds out how to treat a serious fracture.

But this time, she's the patient.

And I find out why the hunting set are big supporters of the air ambulance.

Now, remember the family whose people carrier careered off the M62?

The Helimed team had their work cut out treating so many patients at once.

On the M62 trans-Pennine motorway,

a major rescue operation is underway

after an accident that's injured eight people.

With so many casualties,

both Yorkshire air ambulances have been deployed.

Helimed 98 is taking a 14-year-old girl with suspected spinal injuries to hospital.

It will soon be on its way back to collect another patient from the same scene.

A member of the ground crew has found another casualty.

Mum Rakaira was thrown several metres out of the car into undergrowth.

She's broken her cheekbone and has suspected spinal injuries.

Ready, steady, lift!

Everybody happy where you are?

She has a head wound, but it's not clear how serious the damage is.

Do you feel sick?

Head injuries are always time critical.

The sooner she can get treatment, the better.

Coming forwards and round.

Ready, steady...

She'll be taken to Leeds General Infirmary, where a neurological team is standing by.

Rakaira has no idea that her son Mohammed is still trapped under the car.

Fire crews need to lift the people carrier up

so that they can free his arm.

Medics believe the 16-year-old is the most seriously injured member of the family.

His arm is almost certainly broken after being crushed by two tonnes of metal.

Basically just to pull the vehicle

and it's important the stability of the vehicle is retained.

We just needed to move the vehicle, in all honesty, two to three inches,

the minimum amount to retain all the stability

and ease the gentleman's arm from the vehicle.

I know it sounds daft, but will you form a line around the patient

then we're not blowing on to him as we land down.

Lee wants a human windbreak to shield his patient

as Helimed 98 returns.

Now Mohammed is being released from under the car, the medics can assess his injuries properly

and give him more pain relief before he's loaded up and flown off to hospital.

Coming up: the final patient is freed, but his injuries are among the most serious.

On me, then. One, two, three.

Nice and easy.

And a patient gets the giggles, despite a serious leg injury.

-Do you take any drugs for anything?

-Ooh, no!

-No medicine at all.

-No.

The challenge of conquering the landscape

keeps rock climbers reaching for the skies.

It's a dangerous hobby, even if you're only a few feet off the ground.

Medical student Rachel is still lying under the boulder she tumbled from in the Peak District.

She lost her footing and slipped 15 feet and broke her ankle.

Now it's her foot that's doing the hanging on.

Paramedics Pete Vallance and Lee Gray have given her pain relief,

but this is so serious a break, it may change the way Rachel walks.

We're popping a dressing on your leg.

What they really want to do is straighten her leg and foot

so they can put on a supporting splint. It's a big decision.

-How's that pain?

-It's OK.

-What would you say it was initially?

-We want to straighten your leg straight out from the knee.

-OK.

Oh, my God!

The severity of the damage to Rachel's ankle

and the extreme distress caused by any further movement

means the paramedics decide against the plan.

We're unable to straighten it. We haven't got adequate pain relief

to be straightening it any more than it already is.

So we'll splint it as it is and get her off to hospital.

They can do proper pain relief and in ideal circumstances.

We've cleaned it up, splinted it, and we'll get her on her way.

Straightening and splinting the leg would have kept blood flowing to Rachel's foot.

There's now an urgent need to get her to hospital as swiftly as possible.

Problems with any fracture like that.

There's a break in the continuation of the skin

and that encourages infection to grow round the wound.

It can delay healing quite substantially.

It's important we keep the injury nice and sterile.

And just to recap, looking at the nerves and circulation past that injury in Rachel's foot

which is really important.

We don't want to neglect that and have Rachel developing problems in the foot itself.

Helimed 98 is the fastest way of getting Rachel away from the boulders

and into emergency surgery.

I'm going to pretend it was more, though!

-Make it sound more dramatic.

-Definitely.

'There'll be an ambulance waiting for you.'

Rachel arrived at Sheffield's Northern General Hospital in record time.

Her foot survived, and she's walking again, but she may have a limp for the rest of her life.

Yet without the speed and care of the Helimed team, the outcome could have been a lot worse.

Rachel is now back at university

with first-hand experience of what it's like to be a patient.

Coming up: the rescue operation on the M62 reaches its climax.

One, two, three!

Whatever you think about hunting,

it still plays a big part in many rural communities.

The Derwent Hunt, which meets just outside Scarborough

is one of 200 packs riding out across the UK.

And they often need the services of the air ambulance.

A teenage rider has been crushed by a 16-hand horse

and Helimed 98 has been scrambled.

Quite often, horse-riders have fallen from a height.

Six foot, seven foot, even higher if they were jumping.

So the potential for a heavy weight dropping on somebody's pelvis or legs,

the possibility of serious injuries is always there.

Jennifer Clark's horse rolled over her not once, but twice.

The patient needs to be left in the same position where they've fallen.

The big worry is they may have spinal injuries

or even the pelvis itself. If you start to move people, you aggravate the injuries.

The Derwent Hunt was riding out in classic hunting country, near Malton in North Yorkshire.

Despite the isolated location,

there are plenty of hazards for pilot Chris to negotiate.

The cows are being held, and two horses with riders on.

It's OK. There's a model aircraft site down there.

This is Jenny. She was out with the hunt this morning.

She attempted to jump this on her horse and didn't make it.

Horse and rider came down.

Jennifer's 16.

The horse landed on top of her.

She's been riding out with the Derwent Hunt since she was five.

I'm just getting some morphine up. This lady's fallen onto the fence.

She's got a fracture to the middle of her thigh bone.

It's really painful. We'll give her some more pain relief

so we can get it in a traction splint, get her more comfortable.

Then we can get her on a spinal board and off to Scarborough.

Ah, it hurts!

Jenny was riding her mum's horse, Bob.

He was attempting to clear a tricky jump known as a tiger track

when he slipped in the mud.

You've gathered that it's probably your femur could have a fracture.

So we'll splint it up and put you on a board to carry you to the aircraft.

Jenny has broken the biggest bone in her body, the femur.

Aghh!

Jenny, we'll give you some more pain relief. Bear with it.

This is what medics call a "time critical" injury.

If they don't straighten Jenny's leg immediately,

the blood supply to her foot could be cut off and she could lose it.

Nice deep breaths, sweetheart.

In the worst-case scenario, she could bleed to death.

Straightening the leg is incredibly painful.

-Bite on it!

-Bit more.

Breathe. Go on, breathe! That's it.

At last, this part of Jenny's ordeal is over

and she can be moved into the aircraft.

Bob the horse turns up just before take-off.

We'll only be about five, six minutes and we'll be in Scarborough.

It's a tough turn of events for someone with dreams of a career as a jockey.

It takes four long months of rehabilitation

but eventually Jenny is ready to get back into the saddle.

Jen, you had quite a nasty incident. Tell me what happened.

I can just remember going over and then Bob being on top of me.

So all you remember is he actually rolled on top of you.

He's a massive horse. What injuries did you have?

I could see my leg was bent at the top.

I broke my femur, which is at the top of my leg.

My right leg.

This was a few months ago. It didn't take long before you were back in the saddle.

Well, at first, my leg wasn't healing

so I had to stay on crutches for another six weeks.

But I'm all right. It's just about healed now.

I'm fine now. I've ridden a few times with my new horse.

And I've ridden him a couple of times.

I haven't been hunting again yet, though.

Jenny's decided not to ride professionally

but she's definitely going to keep hunting.

However experienced the horse rider is,

in the rough and tumble of the hunt, they can still end up in a ditch.

Helimed 98 is flying with an all-female medical crew today,

paramedic Sammy Wills and Kate Coughlin.

They've been scrambled to a job well outside their usual patch

at Newark in Nottinghamshire.

We've got reports of a female who's come off a horse

and had some sort of serious bleed.

So we're out to support East Midlands ambulance service.

Retired hairdresser Carol Mayer has come a-cropper.

She's fallen off her horse and is stranded at the bottom of a brambly ditch.

-The main pain is lower back.

-Lower back pain.

I can't feel any displacement at all.

-The collar is mainly just cos she's come down...

-Absolutely. OK.

She's not complaining of any particular pain, but she's had a nasty knock to her head.

She's got back pain. So we're going to do the deed and pop her on the long board.

We were out blood-hounding. We'd just left the house.

My sister is over from South Africa.

I put her on one of my horses that normally a 12-year-old rides.

And she just lost control.

Instead of going around, she went in the ditch and my sister was underneath her.

Horrendous. The horse fell in the ditch.

So my sister fell off and the horse fell on... It's awful! Can't believe it.

Sammy, if we can get her on her side, we can drop the board in.

If we come that way, it might be easier to get her out.

I'll just have a little listen to your chest, OK?

Carol's been riding since she was five years old.

Her horse lost its footing because the brambles and hedge cuttings

were dumped in the dyke, making it look like solid ground.

Then we need as many hands as we can. Three on one side, three on the other,

and we'll go up on the yellow board, just up onto the mud. All right?

Have you got any pain when we've moved you? Nothing more than before?

Taking a tumble is something that happens to most riders sooner or later.

The majority of hunting accidents are minor, but this is potentially serious.

You all right, Carol? You're nearly out, my love.

Spinal injuries are not unknown,

and the team are taking precautions to protect Carol's back.

OK, we'll carry her to the aircraft.

-Sorry, yes, I'm coming.

-Carol, we want to...

-She won't let go.

You need to let go so we can carry you. Hands on your tummy.

Before air ambulances,

patients and paramedics often had to endure long tramps across fields

to the nearest road. Not any more.

She's fine now we've got her out of the brambles.

A bit cut up, some back pain.

We'll do a more thorough check now in case there's injuries we missed.

-She's OK, honest.

-You're all right, Carol.

Carol, we'll just put a few bits and bobs on you, make sure all's OK.

You definitely don't want anything on that eye?

-No.

-No, OK.

This wasn't how Carol expected to end her holiday in the UK.

Her facial injury means she could have a nasty scar as a souvenir of her day hunting.

Carol has broken her nose

and has stitches around her eye.

She made her flight back home to Cape Town a few day later.

It's illegal for hounds to chase foxes.

So the Derwent Hunt, like many others, uses an artificial scent for the hounds to chase.

It still means everyone gets a hair-raising gallop across the countryside.

Huntswoman Sarah Potts was in the chase

when an accident left her with a badly-injured leg.

It's quite a long way from the back of a horse down to the ground.

When you're pitched off, you can land head first

and flex your neck back.

So we're always a bit worried about spinal injuries.

Paramedics Sammy Wells and Al Day know everything about riding a horse is potentially dangerous.

The last thing you want is to fall off your horse,

sustain a neck injury and then get trampled by the horse.

The first thing will be to make sure the horse is out of the way

and then keep the patient still. Don't move them till they've been assessed.

Often finding the casualties of hunting accidents is hard.

Very few hunt followers know exactly where they are at any one time.

Due west from here. That's the way.

Yes, so we want to be t'other side.

Yorkshire air base. Helimed 98 coming in to land.

Luckily, today's directions have been spot on.

Helimed 98 is touching down feet from the team's patient.

-Hello.

-This is Sarah. She's been riding a horse.

-What's she done?

-He bucked and kicked me!

-Bucked and kicked her in the kneecap.

-OK.

There was a cracking noise.

The stirrup cup - a drink before the off - is still a tradition upheld here.

And the alcohol has been doing its bit to ease Sarah's pain.

Right. We're going to put your leg into a splint.

-We'll give you some pain management first.

-Pardon?

-Some pain relief.

-I'm deaf. I'm a bit deaf in one ear.

Sarah's pretty cheerful for an accident victim. It could be the gas.

Chances of doing my friend's hair tonight - zero?

Hunting has an elite image. But its supporters say that's not true.

Sarah is a local hairdresser.

We talked about pain scoring zero to ten.

-What number would you give it now?

-I can't feel a thing.

-Do you take any drugs for anything?

-Ooh, no!

-No medicine at all?

-No.

-We'll get the splint on it now.

-OK.

She's been given first aid by hunt followers who saw her accident.

Her knee is badly damaged after an impact with the steel shoe of another horse.

As she passed another horse, it balked out. Its back leg caught her knee.

She doesn't look badly injured, but an accident like this has a high risk of infection setting in.

-We'll try and stand you up, I think.

-OK.

Some farmers won't let hunts on their land.

But Sarah's pack was welcome here, and farm workers have turned out to help.

Some saw it happen.

When we got here she was all right, she was breathing OK. She hadn't been knocked out.

The only pain was in her knee, so we were lucky, really.

These nice kind folks came and rescued me and we're all right.

So someone's took the horse back.

I don't know where the horse has gone, but someone rode it back to the farm.

All's well.

Sarah's happy to leap hedges on a half-tonne horse,

but there's one thing that does scare her.

No, I hate flying. But I have to do everything as a drama, so...

Sarah recovered from her injury after hospital treatment

and she's now back in the saddle.

As are all our hunting patients.

It's very rare that both Helimed choppers are needed at the same emergency.

But today, that's what's happened.

The lives of several members of the same family

may depend on them.

Eight members of the Ibrahim-Patel family are seriously injured

after their car crashed off the M62 near Leeds.

16-year-old Mohammed was trapped.

He's now been released and paramedics are straightening his broken leg so they can move him.

One, two, three!

Nice and steady.

Nice and easy.

We've topped him up on some morphine, a stronger painkiller than the land crew gave him.

It'll ease his pain a bit.

He's not got any life-threatening injuries as such, but they are serious.

We're going back to Pinderfields. We're only four or five minutes from there.

With so many injured patients, both Yorkshire air ambulances have been running a shuttle service

to the two nearest hospitals to the scene.

Mohammed is travelling in Helimed 98,

the aircraft which has just returned from taking his 14-year-old sister to hospital in Wakefield.

Meanwhile, Helimed 99 has whisked his mum to Leeds.

It's a relief. At this moment in time,

all I hope is that we prioritised patients correctly

and got them to the appropriate treatment centre. We won't know that

probably till tomorrow, but I'm confident we will because we went through it systematically.

An incident with multiple casualties you don't know where to begin unless you have a structure.

That structure was put in place early by us and the first two crews that were on scene.

As Mohammed makes his journey to hospital,

he has no idea what has happened to his mum, dad and five brothers and sisters.

They're being treated in different hospitals and it'll be several days before they're reunited.

RELIGIOUS CHANTING

It's eight months after the accident.

At home in Leicester, dad Hafiz who's an Imam, is giving thanks.

All eight members of his family were injured

but they're recovering well.

SPEAKS IN NATIVE LANGUAGE

MOHAMMED TRANSLATES

In the accident, he didn't exactly know what hurt he did.

But when he went to the hospital, he found out

that his ribs were fractured, he's injured his nose,

and had bruises all over his face.

Immediately after the accident, 14-year-old Sahura and 12-year-old Rabia

ran to get help.

All I can remember is that after I woke up, everything was upside-down.

Everyone was bloody

and torn and the car... Everything was upside-down.

We were running to the houses to get help.

When we came back, the ambulance, everyone was there, taking us away.

I thought Mum was dead as I didn't see her.

So I was scared. I couldn't cry much cos I was really shocked.

Although their mum had three fractured ribs,

a broken cheekbone and a dislocated shoulder,

she had no internal or spinal injuries.

Every member of the family had to have an operation.

But Mohammed came off the worst.

He broke both hands and he broke his leg.

His leg had to be operated on.

He's got a metal rod in there.

And his teeth, about five or six of them came out.

He's getting better, though. Everyone's getting better.

During his recovery, Hafiz hasn't been able to travel as much as he would like.

But slowly the whole family is getting back to normal.

The helicopters, the ambulance, the police, I would like to thank them.

They did a wonderful job with our family, helping us, getting us to hospital straightaway.

They treated us like their own.

-DAUGHTER:

-They did a really good job helping us.

All the family, they really helped us.

Really good. And they came really fast as well.

When Helicopter Heroes comes back:

paramedics Lee and James fight to save a critically ill patient...

in their own office!

-Are you with us, mate?

-Chris!

-Chris!

The x-rays tell the story of a road accident that could have killed a teenager.

In an awkward position on a cold surface.

A couple on a motorbike have a miraculous escape.

I'm OK. Are you all right?

And the team see double when identical twins dial 999.

She kept going in and out of consciousness. I rang the ambulance.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd