St. Joseph’s Hospital in Tampa, FL is relocating its holding area helipad for Care Flight. Construction is now complete on the new pad, and the next step was to take the fuel tank from the old location, and move it to the new.
The helipad is the holding place for the Air Ambulance Care Flight. An air ambulance is an aircraft used for emergency medical assistance in situations where either a traditional ambulance cannot reach the scene easily or quickly enough, or the patient needs to be transported over a distance or terrain that makes air transportation the most practical transport. These and related operations are referred to as Aeromedical. Air ambulance crews are supplied with equipment that enables them to provide medical treatment to a critically injured or ill patient. Common equipment for air ambulances includes ventilators, medication, an ECG and monitoring unit, CPR equipment, and stretchers. An important distinction should be made between a medically staffed and equipped air ambulance which can provide medical care in flight, and the use of a non-medicalized aircraft simply for patient transportation, without care in flight.
CCO Dylan Sherman operated the 70-ton Linkbelt, the Mary Helen, to move the fuel tank from the old helipad to the new pad. The fuel tank was rigged up, secured, and then hoisted from the ground and placed on the flat bed that trucker Clint Walker was managing. He then maneuvered it to the new pad, where it was then hoisted from the truck and placed into its new position. The last step was placing a catwalk on top of it.
The tank holds 5,000 gallons of fuel and in total weights 14,635 pounds.
Of note, the Mary Helen is the face of Sims Crane & Equipment’s 2012 Campaign for the Cure. Mary Helen is CCO Bubba Tillis’s mother-in-law, who is a breast cancer survivor. On the day this job was completed, it was the one-year anniversary of Mary Helen’s life saving double mastectomy, which took place at St. Joseph’s Hospital.
