Aerial Rescue Aids Teen Hiker After Fall In Md.

We might tend to forget that there are many rural areas of Maryland inaccessible to vehicles.  Mike Schuh reports in those cases, when someone gets seriously hurt, state police have to literally pluck the victim out of the trees with their chopper.

A 17-year-old hiker suffered broken bones and a head wound.  It's too remote and dangerous to carry him out, so they had to strap him into a basket, hoist him up to the police chopper, then take him to another chopper and fly him to Shock Trauma.

"This is out of the ordinary.  We do 20 a year, compared to thousands of medevacs we do every year as a system," said Sgt. Mike Perkins, a paramedic for the Maryland State Police.

An assistant chief and his team were on the ground.  They earned the spot by hours of training for just this sort of scenario.

"These missions are few and far between," said Frederick County HEAT Team Assistant Chief John Patton.

"When you get involved in this, you go into training mode," Perkins said.  "It's afterwards you say, you know, I did something special today."

And with terrain as rugged as we have around here, there will no doubt be the need for these special people and equipment again.

Due to patient confidentiality laws, the condition of that 17-year-old is not available.