Two Bear Air dispatched to Bob on double mission

A Great Falls medical helicopter broke down in the Bob Marshall Wilderness on Sept. 17 while attempting to extract a man who thought he was having a heart attack.

The Two Bear Air helicopter, assisted by a medical jet from Great Falls, responded to assist both the heart-attack victim and the stranded helicopter.

The 60-year-old man from Alaska was hiking in the Silvertip Mountain area with his dog, when he sent a text message to his son from a GPS-enabled personal locator beacon. He reported that he didn’t feel well and was going to take an aspirin and try to rest.

He later sent a distress call around 10 a.m. that launched a MercyFlight from Great Falls. Flight coordinator Nadia Bowen at Benefis Health System in Great Falls used coordinates from the text messages to create a map with a 30-mile radius of the man’s possible location.

The MercyFlight helicopter located a hunting camp and landed. Hunters told medics the man wasn’t there, but then the helicopter wouldn’t start. Bowen dispatched a MercyFlight jet to fly above the area, which was able to make radio contact with the helicopter.

Bowen then contacted Flathead County, which dispatched Two Bear Air to assist MercyFlight. According to Flathead County Sheriff Chuck Curry, the helicopter had lost a starter generator.

Two Bear Air located the man north of the hunting camp, landed and left several crew members behind. Two Bear then flew the patient and a MercyFlight nurse to Benefis.

At Benefis, a mechanic boarded the Two Bear Air helicopter with the necessary parts to repair the MercyFlight chopper. Two Bear then flew the mechanic to the wilderness site.

The MercyFlight helicopter was a EuroCopter 135 P2 borrowed from Spokane. MercyFlight’s regular helicopter is an EC 135 PR Plus, which has a larger engine, but it was out of service that day for regular scheduled maintenance. Two Bear Air flies a Bell 429 helicopter.