Descent into danger
Former ‘dope on a rope’ Dave Greenberg lays bare his actionpacked career of high-peril, highwire rescues. By James Paul.
Dave Greenberg’s gut told him that day would be ‘‘crap’’ – but the rescue chopper crewman couldn’t predict just how Anzac Day 2010 would leave a vivid and permanent scar on his memory.
Labelled Westpac rescue helicopter’s ‘‘dope-on-a-rope’’, Greenberg spent 25 years occasionally dangling by a winch to pluck people from dangerous seas and ravines, but of his nearly 4000 rescue missions, Sunday, April 25, 2010 stands out clearly.
As he circled in on the rugged terrain near Pukerua Bay, about 40km northeast of Wellington, Greenberg was ‘‘sickened’’ at the sight of the wreckage of an air force Iroquois helicopter scattered across hundreds of metres of hillside.
The RNZAF aircraft had been en route from Ohakea Air Base in the Rangitikei region to Anzac Day services in Wellington when it crashed into a gully on the hills high above State Highway 1.
Already dead from the crash were Flight Lieutenant Hayden Madsen, 33, Flying Officer Dan Gregory, 28, and Corporal Ben Carson, 25. A body lay near the debris.
Only thanks to the bravery of pilot Harry Stevenson and Greenberg was sole survivor, Sergeant Stevin Creeggan, able to be winched to safety.
‘‘One thing I have learned to trust over the years is my gut feeling. And my gut told me that the morning was quickly turning to crap,’’ Greenberg says, adding that that morning’s shift has left a ‘‘permanent scar on my soul’’.
The other thing that has endured the past seven years is the friendship Greenberg struck up with Creeggan, who has endured a long recovery from serious head, chest, leg and spinal injuries.
‘‘Stevin will always be a mate as well as a reminder of why I was so lucky to do the job I loved for 25 years,’’ Greenberg says.
And Creeggan, who has since moved to Cairns, Australia, where the warmer climate helps him manage his ongoing pain, pays tribute to the man who helped keep him sane during his frequent visits to Palmerston North Hospital.
‘‘It’s a friendship that started over a wire. Between my humour and friends like Dave, it is literally the only reason I’m around now. He’s a fantastic person who has a heart of gold, and very caring,’’ he says.
‘‘I have a lot of admiration for Dave and the team for what they did that Anzac Day. The professionalism shown by the team was enormous, the fact they were able to carry out their jobs looking at what they saw, I owe my life to them.’’
Greenberg, who has written up his exploits in a memoir called Emergency Response: Life, Death and Helicopters,
says he was spurred on to his future career growing up in New York in the 1970s and watching the American TV paramedic drama series Emergency!
It followed paramedics John Gage and Roy DeSoto as they put their lives on the line to save people in all kinds of situations.
Cementing that desire to be a hero was getting his ‘‘first kiss’’ at the age of 13, when he helped perform CPR on a man who had collapsed in the street, until paramedics could arrive.
‘‘My first kiss was the kiss of life, and it was the best first kiss I could have ever wished for.’’
Throughout his childhood, Greenberg would find any excuse to visit and learn from his role models at the Fire Department of New York or the more local West Hamilton Beach Volunteer Fire Department and Ambulance Corps.
He joined the Lindenwood Volunteer Ambulance Corps where he was taught CPR as a Youth Squad member, and two years later – when he was still 17 – he was regularly riding in the ambulance and had delivered his first baby. ‘‘This was truly a big night for me. Instead of saving a life I’d helped bring a new baby into this world.’’
High school never interested Greenberg, but he enjoyed computer studies at the State University of New York at Fredonia and signed up for the Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) course. He gained a level-three EMT and was later recruited for a computer programming job in Dallas, Texas. In 1990, he moved to New Zealand, became involved in the
Wellington Free Ambulance and the Life Flight Trust and within weeks was preparing for a training mission in the AS350B helicopter nicknamed the ‘‘Squirrel’’ that would make or break his career.
He was quick to make an impression and became one of four volunteers.
‘‘In about March of 1991, when I started, I knew it was a privilege to be a part of such a dream job,’’ he says.
‘‘I went from drooling on the outside of the helicopter looking in, to drooling on the inside looking out.
‘‘It was a very cool thing to be a part of from day one to day whatever it was, 25 years later.’’
Tempered by nerves of steel, he was offered a full-time position in 1995 as crew chief, acting crewman for both the helicopter and the fixed wing air ambulance, a position he kept for a decade when he was appointed operations manager.
He says the new role helped keep him mentally engaged when he wasn’t flying, allowing him a place on many air ambulance, health and ambulance committees.
But his journey wasn’t always free of turbulence, and he was involved in every rescue team’s worst nightmare in 1997 when the Westpac Rescue Helicopter was called to the Terminator, a 40-foot yacht racing between Wellington and Akaroa that had lost its rudder.
Standing in the chopper’s doorway, with two of nine sailors already safe inside, Greenberg was winching two more off the stricken boat, when, with a metre to go before making it to the relative safety of the skid, Picton yachtsman Chris Webb went limp and slipped the harness.
Greenberg watched him plunge nearly 10 metres into waves and disappear beneath the surface.
Hovering 100m above the waves and fighting the nearly 150kmh winds, the rescue team were running low on fuel. ‘‘There was nothing else anyone could do to help us; either we were going to find Chris or not,’’ he says.
‘‘I don’t think I had ever felt so helpless during a mission – this was not how it was supposed to go.’’
Suddenly something caught Greenberg’s eye, a bit of Webb’s orange survival suit.
When he was spotted waving from the sea, Greenberg removed his helmet, attached the winch
My first kiss was the kiss of life, and it was the best first kiss I could have ever wished for. Dave Greenberg
hook to his harness and was out the door.
Webb had spent 10 minutes in the rough seas, but within the hour, the team had delivered four sailors back to Wellington and had headed back to retrieve the other five.
Four years later, Greenberg was invited to Webb’s 50th birthday.
‘‘Again it reminded me what a difference our team made, day in and day out.’’
Greenberg’s memoir is packed with the various missions that affected him most during his career with the Westpac Rescue Helicopter.
Having been given the opportunity to apply for two new managerial positions, neither involving flying, the winch operator announced his departure and put away his white Life Flight helmet in his locker for the final time on May 8, 2014.
He stayed on with the trust for a further two years part-time but says he was always happiest swinging metres above the ground, beneath the chopper.
In the 12 months since Greenberg finally left Life Flight, his transition into a life without flight has been difficult. Now he says that completing the book and seeing his rescues through the eyes of those who were saved has been a therapeutic journey.
‘‘There were some bad things that I had to revisit. It opened up a few boxes that I wish were still locked away at the back of the head,’’ he says.
‘‘So, yeah, there were a few tears along the way of just dealing with some things that I should have dealt with before. But it was also nice remembering the people who were most special in my life, and the really neat things we got to do together.’’
Greenberg says he doesn’t have many regrets, either about his career or the writing of his book.
‘‘There were a few missed dinners and family events but, overall, I wouldn’t change anything except the way it ended.’’
His book – written with freelance writer Adrienne Kohler – also shows the significance of one of New Zealand’s most important medical care services.
‘‘I think people in New Zealand love rescue helicopters and love what we do, and I don’t see this story as my story but one of the team’s I worked with,’’ he says.
‘‘I wouldn’t have got anywhere without the rest of the team. Every pilot is one medical away from losing their licence.
‘‘So, to go out on my own terms was really a gift. It’s not often in life you get to write your own ending.’’