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Air ambulance
arrives for Maui
New service will aid patients in outlying areas
KULA, Maui >> Henrietta Chong recalled that an ambulance took 45 minutes before arriving to attempt to revive her daughter-in-law, who had a heart attack while asleep on Father's Day in 1994.
"It was a nightmare for us," said Chong, who remembered her son shouting again and again, "Where's the ambulance? Where's the ambulance?"
Chong says her daughter-in-law, Brenda Chong, might be alive today if there had been an air ambulance. Since then, Chong has lobbied for an emergency air helicopter service for Maui County.
Yesterday, Chong, along with other members of the Kula community, participated in a blessing and celebration marking the start of countywide emergency air helicopter service.
"I can't believe this is finally happening," Chong said.
Scores of people attended the blessing at a ball field makai of the Kula Fire Station, including state Sens. Rosalyn Baker, J. Kalani English and Shan Tsutsui, sponsors of the bill establishing the service, and Mayor Alan Arakawa and Councilman Robert Carroll, who lobbied for it.
The service is intended to quicken the transport of patients suffering from severe trauma and injury from outlying parts of the county, including Kula, Hana, West Maui, Molokai and Lanai.
The helicopter will be based at Kahului Airport, a few miles from Maui Memorial Medical Center, and will usually fly up to Haleakala to use the ground ambulance crew in Kula when responding to emergency air calls.
State officials said funding a 24-hour emergency medical crew based at Kahului Airport would have been expensive and prevented them from operating the air service.
The county and state have agreed to each pay $611,500 annually for the service, and the county contributed an additional $100,000 in planning the operation.
Chong said Brenda had a 3-year-old and 6-week-old daughters.
"Her absence will always be felt," Chong said. "You have the girls growing up without a mother."
She said the service might not be perfect but that it was a start.
"This is better than nothing," she said. "Hopefully, it's going to get better. You never know who it will help."
