Santa’s sleigh takes detour to help with medical mission
Santa Claus’ sleigh took on new responsibilities in rural Alaska this week when delivering gifts to an Alaska Native village.
Santa’s ride — an Alaska Army National Guard UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter — was shuttling Santa, Mrs Claus, volunteer elves and gifts in shifts on Thursday to provide the children of Tuluksak some
Christmas cheer.
However, after the first trip, the helicopter crew got an urgent call seeking help for a medical evacuation in the nearby village of Napaskiak, located about 8km south on the other side of the Kuskokwim River.
The river in the winter serves as an ice road, but there was only enough ice at this time of the year to prevent boats from operating.
The ice wasn’t thick enough to support vehicles, and bad weather prevented small planes from landing at the village air strip.
Helicopter pilots Colton Bell and David Berg shifted focus, adding two paramedics and medical equipment to the flight and the remaining gifts for children.
They flew the five minutes to Napaskiak and dropped off the paramedics, who said they would need about 40 minutes to stabilise the patient.
That gave the pilots time to take the 15-minute flight to Tuluksak to drop off the gifts and volunteers.
They then returned to the other village to pick up the patient and paramedics and flew them to an awaiting ambulance. The patient was in stable condition yesterday and awaiting transport to an Anchorage hospital.
The Alaska National Guard for decades has delivered gifts, supplies and sometimes Christmas itself to tiny rural communities dotting the nation’s largest and largely roadless state.
The programme began in 1956 when residents of St Mary’s village had to choose between buying gifts for children or food to make it through winter after flooding, followed by drought, wiped out hunting and fishing opportunities that year.
The guard stepped up, taking donated gifts and supplies to the village. Now they attempt every year to visit two or three villages that have experienced hardships.
Long-distance and extreme rescues by guard personnel are common in Alaska because most communities don’t have the infrastructure that exists in other states.