Medivac

Flying and living here in Indonesia has been full of new experiences.  I have lots of photos but have not shared them yet due to the fact that living life here takes 100% of my energy and being at the "ripe" old age of 34, I go to bed around 9 (sometimes earlier) 😏.

My typical day is arriving early to the hangar and preflighting the aircraft. To "preflight" means that I check over the entire aircraft looking for cracks in certain areas, leaks, worn out tires or other potential problems that I don't want to happen while I am out flying.  This process takes me about 20-30 min to complete, at the same time as cargo and luggage is being loaded and tied down by our local staff.


Then I gather information about where I need to go for the day and what the weather is like out in the area of jungle I will be flying into:

Sometimes it I look down on the clouds like this...

...and other times it is looks down on me.


Usually I have a schedule for the day to go to certain villages bringing passengers and cargo.

    This is the village of Long Bawan and is a regular stop for us since it is not connect to any other cities by road or river.  It is serviced by either air or walking path.


Sometimes during my day I get a call for a medical evacuation (or medivac) to go get a sick person from a remote village and bring them to hospital.

Having already gotten the call, I arrived in Long Layu for an "orang sakit"
(in Indonesian it means: sick person or patient)

Lots of people gather around to say farewell to the accompanying family member
and sick person

Loading them up is done the traditional way, by hand carrying the person

A little tricky when you start running out of room

As comfortable as possible.

A boy observing the proceedings

Almost all done and about ready to get this person flow to the nearest hospital which is about 60 miles away, or a 35 min flight.

Meals are not scheduled so we catch them when we can. Even on the back elevator of the aircraft while doing paperwork.

When I arrived in Malinau and dropped off the first patient, I had another patient waiting for me to be taken to Tarakan because the hospital here couldn't care for this critically ill lady.

It was already fairly late but the airport stayed opened (closes usually at 5pm) so I could takeoff and get the orang sakit to Tarakan.

After the usual farewells from family, we were able to get her laying down in the aircraft and blasted off for Tarakan.

We arrived back in Tarakan just as the sun was setting.