New Tech Helps LifeFlight of Maine Save Lives (DownEast Magazine)

July 31, 2023

When the stakes couldn’t be higher, a new network of high-tech weather cams helps air-ambulance crews make critical decisions.

“People don’t get that investment in rural airports is an investment in health care,” says Josh Dickson. “For us, airports are health-care facilities.” With almost a third of Maine’s rural hospitals facing the risk of closure, according to one recent study, these airstrips become even more important

That’s why, last year, Rolfson and Josh Dickson, LifeFlight’s director of aviation services, began installing some three dozen cameras, $4,000 a pop, at rural airstrips and along high ridgelines that pilots need to judge if they can safely clear. 

Read the full story by Jesse Ellison in the July 2023 issue of DownEast Magazine.