Episode 3 Helicopter Heroes

If you're critically ill or seriously injured, seconds count.

And in Britain's biggest county,

you can be a long way from help.

-'Where's the patient?'

-'She's stuck under the car.'

The Yorkshire Air Ambulance flies at 150 miles per hour,

and thanks to its speed, hundreds of patients are alive today,

saved by a highly skilled team of doctors and paramedics.

-Stand clear, everybody.

-Keep going.

It covers some of the UK's most rugged landscapes,

turning roadsides into operating theatres...

We're going to pop him off to sleep on an emergency anaesthetic, OK?

..and town centres into helipads.

-Good on the left.

-Just behind you, Tim.

And everyday, the Helimed team's skill, speed and courage

is saving lives.

Today on Helicopter Heroes...

a cyclist has a bizarre accident

and a passing van driver turns lifesaver.

He hit the wall and disappeared.

He was about there, facing down in the water.

Ex-miner Darren returns to the pit to save the driver of a giant truck.

Watch your step coming backwards.

Yorkshire's biggest waterfalls claim another casualty.

Jim had just shouted, "Mind the ice".

Travelling around the North is full of ups and downs,

in fact, one road in Yorkshire is officially England's steepest,

with a gradient of one in three.

For cyclists, a ride in the country can be an uphill struggle,

but it's going downhill that's most dangerous.

EMERGENCY CALL:

It's clear this is an emergency

that's going to test all of the Helimed team's skills.

Not sure whether it's a pedal cyclist or motorcyclist

who's fallen approximately 20 feet in quite a remote area,

from what we can gather. So it's the usual, really,

we'll just keep an open mind,

it could be anything from a simple fractured ankle or something,

to something more life-threatening.

A ground ambulance has just arrived at the scene of the accident.

The paramedics found 40-year-old Richard Clough

stranded 20 feet below

and they soon discover the incredible story

behind what's just happened.

He's come the hill, not been able to negotiate the bend,

and hit the wall and gone headfirst right into the river.

Fortunately there was a guy in a red van who saw the incident

and he rescued him from the water.

When I stopped my van and looked over the edge,

he was bang-smack in the middle of the river.

As I managed to get down to him

he was starting to move further and further under the bridge.

He was still in the centre of the river, still had his face fully down,

submerged, with just the back of his helmet out of the river.

I literally managed to get...

I put my legs either side of him,

picked him up underneath and dragged him to the bank.

Southwest of this wind farm

and at one o'clock we should have Penistone.

As we go over the hill we'll come across Stocksbridge.

The crew of Helimed 98 has been called

because this bizarre accident

has happened in a remote part of the Peak District.

-We should be over it now.

-We should be more or less there.

But this team also has extra skills

to help treat patients in hard-to-reach places.

Yeah, so basically,

the ambulance is at the bottom of this bendy road in the valley.

We're not sure whether the patient's with the ambulance

or somewhere else.

I've got a feeling they may be elsewhere,

because the local mountain rescue team have been dispatched.

But even with Tony's six years' experience on the helicopter,

he wasn't expecting to find his patient

in quite such a dangerous position.

He's a cyclist that's come straight down here, hit here,

gone straight over here.

He were in the water, face-down, unconscious.

He does suffer with epilepsy.

I think he might have had a blackout on the way down.

Couldn't see him.

Looked over the wall, and he's there,

right at the bottom, in the river.

Luckily there was a guy with him who was in front of us in a van

and he'd managed to get to him and lift him out of the water.

Luckily the man in the red van had just caught him

as he was washing downstream.

He managed to pull him out.

But he was totally unconscious when we first got down.

Richard's life has been saved by Marcus Headland's quick thinking.

But although he's now conscious again, he's far from safe.

The paramedics fear Richard may have inhaled water.

This can lead to secondary drowning,

a rare but lethal complication

in which patients' lungs fill with fluid

and they drown, long after they've been pulled from the water.

By the time he's got out of the van, realised he's not coming back up...

A minute?

But when I got down he was already out of the water, in this corner.

His eyes were open but absolutely nobody was at home

and that would have been five minutes after when he first came out.

Falling this far at high speed

could have left him with very serious injuries,

but Richard and his rescuers

are now facing a more imminent danger.

The tributaries are all flooding in at the water, down by the river,

so while we were down there it had raised by three inches.

So they need to get him out quickly,

because I think the water's going to rise quite sharply.

It's raining here now,

and if it's raining here, plus up in the mountains,

that will raise very quickly - and does rise very quickly.

-Do you feel cold, or are you all right?

-Pretty cold.

-Pretty cold.

Not only are the paramedics worried

about Richard's injuries from the fall,

they're also concerned about his body temperature.

Get something on him. He is cold, so we might as well.

With soaking clothes on a winter day,

hypothermia is a real threat.

So getting warm sleeping bags to him is one of the top priorities.

Shall we just cover him up initially, the best we can,

and then shall we just put it on?

Yeah.

I think we're going to be here a while, aren't we,

by the sounds of it.

He's obviously cold, he's got a dislocated shoulder,

he's been knocked out.

Fire rescue is going to be about a half-hour,

the river has risen by a couple inches in the last 15 minutes

and it's raining further up north.

So obviously there's a bit of a time limit,

we don't want to spend too long here.

Getting down this steep bank is tricky enough,

so hauling a badly-injured patient up here without specialist help

will be impossible.

But with every minute that passes,

Richard's body temperature is dropping,

while the river level is continuing to rise.

You only have to look at the landscape

to see the difference man has made to Yorkshire's countryside.

For 200 years,

this county has been one of the UK's industrial powerhouses.

1,000 feet below the Yorkshire countryside is an ancient resource

that's still big business.

It may be unfashionable in the age of renewable energy,

but coal still turns on the lights in much of Britain,

and these days this is how it's transported.

At Maltby Colliery near Rotherham, trucks lug coal in 60-tonne loads.

But today, there's been a serious accident.

There's a very large colliery in Maltby, in South Yorkshire,

and from what we've been told, the driver is currently trapped.

Apparently we have crews on the scene and fire is also attending.

So it sounds quite serious.

One of Maltby's giant tipper trucks has left the roadway

and plunged into a gully.

Its driver is badly hurt.

Paramedic Darren Axe used to work down the pit.

He's well aware it's a risky industry.

Got to be on the seam somewhere, this end of it.

Just be aware that it's not all likely to be solid ground.

That's what I'm thinking about.

Yeah, that's it.

He's, er, he's not gone over. It looks like it's on its...

-It's gone in on its nose.

-Yeah.

Paramedic Dave Appleby knows an accident involving a truck with a 60-tonne load

is likely to be much more serious

than a crash in a road vehicle.

He was wedged between t'seats and t'side of thing.

So I can't take t'roof off. He's still wedged.

Driver Len Hammond was thrown forward

and hit his head on a metal bulkhead in the impact.

Eh up, mate.

Hiya.

There's no way we can get him out.

Even if we take t'window out,

we can't get him out cos of where he is.

-What we're going to have to do is top and tail him from there to there.

-Yeah.

We've got KED here.

-We'll put it round him there and get him down on KED.

-OK.

That's the only thing we can do.

Solid, mate, yeah, no probs.

Len's arm's broken,

but it's his head injury that's most worrying his rescuers.

Does it look like he's got any other major injuries?

Can't tell. Hold his feet for me.

-Everywhere you ask him about pain, he's got it. It's one of them.

-OK.

Darren was a miner for ten years

and that's where he first learned first aid.

The pit nurse is an old colleague.

-He's bleeding quite badly from his head.

-Right.

-He's stuck

between the seat and the front.

-The windscreen's smashed, so I think his head's gone into the windscreen.

-Right.

-His blood pressure weren't too bad.

-Is he trapped or is he pinned in?

He's pinned.

Three paramedics are trying to manhandle Len from a cab designed to accommodate just one driver.

Freeing him is proving almost impossible

and his condition's showing worrying signs of deterioration.

Is there any...? What about if we try and get him back onto the seat?

On three. One, two, three.

Len's a big guy and, despite all the strength of his rescuers,

moving him is proving very difficult.

It's all right, I don't mind.

Let me just shift that thing again.

We'll just shuffle him a little bit if we can.

One, two, three.

If this was an ordinary lorry,

firefighters would be cutting apart the cab to free Len.

But this truck is far too strongly-built to remove the roof

and the paramedics know if they can't free their patient soon,

his life could be in real danger.

The Yorkshire Dales are a National Park,

protected by the full force of the law from development that could threaten their character.

But some places are so rugged, nature doesn't need our help.

The sound of Aysgarth Falls can drown out a jet plane

and this mile-long series of waterfalls

has an irresistible attraction.

Wordsworth wrote poems about it, Turner painted it

and it's even appeared in Hollywood movies, like Kevin Costner's epic

Robin Hood Prince Of Thieves.

Today, it's Helimed 99's destination.

We're off to Aysgarth Falls,

which is remarkably famous for

Kevin Costner playing Robin Hood and Little John,

but today somebody's fallen.

They're on a footpath and we're not entirely sure exactly where they are,

but, hopefully, they're not in the water.

Right, I've got somebody with a red jacket.

That means he's below us...

Finding a patient in a landscape like this is tricky.

-Somebody...

-Yeah, they're sat down.

..coming down to the woods in a vehicle, just down there. Yep.

And a jacket below us now.

Are they still moving?

-Still moving.

-Oh, right, I think we'll go back to that point then.

-My name's Sammy, what's yours?

-Norma.

Hello, Norma. So, what have you been up to today then?

Er... I'm positive I've snapped my leg.

OK, well, you stay in that position.

I know it doesn't look very comfortable.

Are you normally fit and well, Norma?

Er, generally I'm OK.

Yep.

And I just slipped on some ice there and this leg went underneath me

and there was a crack.

And a crack as well. OK, then.

-Did you bang your head at all?

-No.

-Have you got any pain in your neck or your back at all?

-No. No.

We were coming down the hill and she slipped and there was a loud crack in her leg as she went down.

So I think probably... probably broken a bone.

Norma seems unfazed by her accident.

This isn't the first time she's needed help like this.

-Have you ever broken a bone before?

-Yes, I broke this leg just under the kneecap.

Three years ago, she was airlifted from the Lake District

by a Navy helicopter after an identical slip.

'99, go ahead.'

Yeah, roger, Dave, just for your information,

I would imagine we're going to be ending up taking her

as you're not going to be able to get a vehicle too close to this.

I'd think we're probably going to Harrogate.

Norma's 77, but she's still a leading member of her local rambling club.

Ironically, she was out checking the path was safe for other members when she fell.

I just slipped on the ice.

-There's some ice on the path there.

-Just behind you, isn't it, Norma?

Yes. And Jim had just shouted, "Mind the ice!"

-And over you went.

-And over I went.

Local paramedic Pete Shaw and his colleagues from Fell Rescue

are used to accidents by the falls.

Norma's probably my seventh or eighth patient down here.

But it's like any walk.

You know, you just take a wrong turn and a slip can do a bit of damage.

I rescued my other half

from a hill similar to this in February this year with a broken leg.

So, yeah, I had to call the mountain rescue team out for her.

Have you seen the falls whilst you've been here?

-No.

-You haven't quite got that far?

-Well, hopefully...

-You'll come back another time.

-Yeah.

But, just to confirm, you don't feel any pins and needles or anything?

You can wiggle your toes fine. OK.

-How's that helping with the pain?

-Good.

Yeah? Can you score it for me again out of ten?

It's gone down a lot now.

Paramedic Al Day is a mountain rescue volunteer

and his bedside manner's not for the easily offended.

Have you ever entered or won any knobbly knees competitions?

No!

Eh? When you're down, when you're down!

Sadly, Norma's previous fall and her rheumatism

have taken their toll on her leg.

The only way out for their patient is by air.

The riverside footpath back to the nearest road

is treacherous, as flying paramedic Lee Davison has just found out.

He's working on a ground ambulance today.

Obviously very difficult access.

There's no way we'd have got the vehicle down here,

so ideal job for the air ambulance.

It's time to fly Norma to hospital.

She's on her way out of the Dales to Harrogate,

with a friend for moral support.

Judith is coming with us.

Oh, that's lovely.

-Hey, that's even better.

-That's even better.

And Jim knows all about it.

The police are going to tell him where it is.

There you go.

She certainly won't be the last victim of a fall at Aysgarth.

They attract thousands of people every year.

It's, um...

It's just obviously when everything's icy and slippery like this,

people come a cropper.

Sorry, Norma, you didn't get to see the water.

Norma's fitter than many people 20 years younger,

but having recovered from a bad break once before,

she knows accidents like today's can have serious consequences.

Subject to the damage that she's done,

it's possibly to be six weeks, twelve weeks,

maybe even longer.

She has a bone challenge anyway, so we'll take care of her.

And with physio and rest, hopefully she'll be back up and walking,

ready for the hike that she was planning.

Norma's taken for X-rays and, after treatment for a broken bone just below her knee,

she's sent home.

But she's determined to be back out with the rambling club soon.

In the Peak District, rain is threatening the safety of one of the Helimed's team's patients.

He plunged off a moorland bridge into a river

and rescuing him is not going to be easy.

With the waters rising, cyclist Richard Clough's predicament

is becoming more risky by the minute.

But he would never have survived his freak accident in the first place

if it hadn't been for the heroism of Marcus, the van driver who saw him fall.

Just gathering more and more speed down the hill.

I was following him, thinking if he doesn't slow down, he'll crash,

at which point he hit the wall

and went straight over the wall and disappeared.

I've managed to get down that side and down there

and, when I found him,

he was about there, facing down in the water.

I've run into the water, managed to turn him round,

so his head isn't under the water.

And then I managed to get my arms underneath him

and I hauled him to where he is now.

The paramedics know their patient needs to get to hospital quickly.

Richard's temperature is dropping and his pain is spreading to other parts of his body.

That's only come on... You've only noticed that recently, haven't you?

Yeah.

Can you rest back?

The worst pain's in your shoulder?

But, before they can treat him properly,

the paramedics need to wait for the local mountain rescue team.

Getting him out will be far from straightforward.

I think it's going to be a bit of a job for whoever's getting him out.

It's that slippy, it's not going to be easy.

I'd say probably along to there and then up the nearside of this tree.

Yeah.

Eventually, the rescue team arrives.

This case is exactly what these volunteers train for.

Their skills will be critical for Richard's safety.

He's in a very difficult position, in the bottom of the stream.

It's quite slippy and it's far too dangerous for us to lift him.

These guys have got ropes and various pieces of equipment.

They're a lot better at extricating this gentleman than what we'd be.

So it'll be a lot safer for him.

That's why they're here at the moment.

The concern at the moment is potential hypothermia because he's been in the stream for a time.

So he's very wet.

Tony's down there at the moment, given him some pain relief,

wrapped him up nice and warm.

Now we're just liaising with mountain rescue to get him out.

Anchor on there, strong point on there.

And then...

I know that as soon as it moves, it's going to kill me.

You're not actually holding him there, are you?

I'm sort of propping him with my knee.

I think he would be... My left knee, I'm sort of...

Yeah, he is sliding slowly down the...

He's actually slipping down.

He's on a little grass verge that goes directly into the stream, so...

we need to get hold of him quite quickly, cos it's tiring, holding someone for that length of time.

I've just had a word with team leader, if there's anything quick we can put in place.

They're quite happy they're going to rig this up fairly quickly, so we'll get down to him soon as.

We're querying, because he's been found face down in t'river.

He's come down here. So we're querying, but no obvious...

indications that he's hurt his neck.

Obviously we're maintaining C-spine. He's got pain in his left shoulder,

query dislocated,

and pain down his left thigh.

He's been KO'd, he's come all the way down there,

so obviously we've got to suspect some neck damage.

-So we need to get him in the vac, nice and secure, strapped on that, and hope.

-Yeah, basically.

Treating a patient in this position is tricky enough,

but getting him from here onto the specialist rescue stretcher

will take some lateral thinking.

If you can try and support his head.

Could we not move him out a little way, maybe into t'river?

So all these could pull him away

and then either get those underneath or get other guys to help us?

It's a really radical idea, but it might just work.

-If we put t'stretcher out here and he goes up and straight on and straight up.

-Yeah.

It's just a simply rope belay with a friction device on it,

so that when we haul him up, when we do a stop,

he doesn't slide back down again, so it's nice and safe

for the casualty, the medics and the mountain rescuers.

Get it as close as we can, shortest distance to lift,

less chance of dropping him or falling over.

We'll put a man behind you and a man above you.

Tony's got the head. Then we go for the move.

Man on the bottom of the stretcher, man on the top of the stretcher, so it can't go anywhere.

This part of the rescue is now totally in the hands of the mountain rescue volunteers.

But they need to work fast.

Ready, steady, move!

Keep going, keep going. And down.

This is now the most critical part of the rescue.

Richard's injuries can only be properly checked on the roadside,

but, first, it's down to this single rope

and a lot of manpower to get him there.

Ready, steady, lift.

Whoa!

It's been a long rescue, but cyclist Richard Clough

is finally on his way out of the steep ravine he fell into.

We've just literally lifted this gentleman out.

We're going to pop him on t'stretcher, back of t'vehicle. Should be up shortly.

-Stepping...

-Step down.

We've lifted this chap out the bottom of this stream

and popped him on a vacuum mattress,

to keep him immobilised.

We've lifted him up with a lot of manpower,

cos it's a steep hill to lift up.

We'll pop him on the stretcher, back of the ambulance, to the aircraft.

His neck's not going anywhere. Keep your head nice and still again.

'They needed as much muscle power, so to speak, as possible.'

As you can tell, I'm a bit out of breath from pulling him up there.

So, yes, it was quite a difficult rescue, but we got there eventually.

Richard will now be taken on a short trip in the ambulance,

out of the ravine to the waiting helicopter.

Ready, steady, lift.

It's nearly two hours since the accident

and the 20 foot plunge which left him unconscious.

Despite the thick sleeping bags, his body temperature is still very low.

So, a speedy flight to hospital is now crucial.

He's a known epileptic,

the patient, he felt that he was going to have a fit,

and probably because of that, he's left the road

and fallen down a bank into a river, about 20',

and had to be pulled out of the river.

Unconscious for a period of one minute.

He's quite cold. He was in the river for a period of time

and it has been quite a long extrication to get him out.

So, we've got him wrapped up, but he's still quite cold.

And lifting.

He's been really lucky, probably cos of people with him,

and the van driver that's seen what's happened.

They've rendered assistance, really quickly.

Otherwise, it could've been a different outcome, I expect.

Lying ahead of Richard is a series of specialist checks,

connected to his epilepsy,

as well as surgery for his broken arm and shoulder.

For the next 24 hours, he's kept in hospital,

but, incredibly, doctors can find nothing more wrong with him than that broken arm.

It means the only way to enjoy the Peak District

is at a more leisurely pace with Jo, his very relieved wife.

I was very unlucky to get a seizure when I did,

cos I've not had one for several months.

And, of all the places to have a seizure that could've been anywhere,

I get one on a one-in-six descent on a bike!

So, that's very unlucky, but, at the same time,

it's incredibly lucky that I was able to fall where I did.

And what was even more lucky was that Marcus saw him

and went to help,

risking his own safety with a split-second decision

to save him from the water.

I owe him a lot, don't I?

He saw me go over the bridge,

thought I was going to pop up from a field,

and he looks himself and I'm 30 foot down in the water.

And, very fortunately...

It shows there's a lot of humanity in the world,

that he came down and dragged me out.

But, since then, Richard's known nothing of the man who undoubtedly saved his life.

So, today, in a pub close to where his accident happened,

they're meeting for the first time.

-I'm hoping you could tell me something about it.

-Yeah.

-I've not got a great memory of it.

-Right.

You just kept going and I was following you, thinking you're not going to stop.

You got faster and faster, hit the wall, and just disappeared.

So I pulled you out, put you face first into the bank

and that's when...I left you and ran up to climb up

and that's when the biker stopped.

-I'm surprised you're all right. You were really cold.

-Right, yes.

I think that's probably the main problem after you dragged me out.

Incredible.

The number of people who are so keen

and willing to help people like myself

who got into such a mess.

'The Woodhead Mountain Rescue man called me a miracle man,

'because I'm not sure he's ever seen anything quite like it,

'that somebody has fallen from such a height at such a speed

'and been so lucky to fall where I did

'and only come out with a broken humerus.

'It just doesn't happen!'

But this miraculous escape has certainly left its mark on Richard.

He's decided cycling's no longer for him.

'I'm not going to be cycling again.'

This tells me now it's time to stop. I've got a wife, a lovely wife,

and two lovely children.

It's just not sensible at all to do that any more.

I think next time I come round here, I'll be wearing boots,

rather than on a bike.

And you won't be surprised to hear that Marcus has been recommended for a bravery award

for that remarkable rescue.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd