New Calstar Medical Helicopter now stationed in Santa Cruz County

Rather than relying on helicopters from Salinas, Gilroy or Palo Alto, Santa Cruz County now has its own medical aircraft.

This week Calstar opened it’s new medical airbase at the Watsonville Airport.

The Emergency Medical Services Administrator says while having a local helicopter will only save a few minutes, those minutes matter, “in some cases it can be critical to somebodies life. The main advantage to having a helicopter here is in the transport time that gets saved, should somebody need to go to a hospital that is further away from our local facilities,” says Brenda Brenner.

According to Calstar the chopper is an Airbus EC 135 helicopter and is medically-configured and equipped with the latest in air technology and safety features. It also has GPS approach capabilities that will allow transports to and from Dominican Hospital during cloudy weather which we often see here on the Central Coast.

The county says the aircraft will serve multiple services outside of responding to car accidents and hospital transports, “if we should have a natural disaster such as an earthquake, or like two years ago with the floods and the roads were all closed, and a patient has a special need, that having a helicopter with in our County offers the ability to continue to move those patients out, even though the roads were closed,” says Brenner.

The base is operational 24/7 and if the weather is too severe to fly, Calstar says the medical staff will also be able to help with ground transports if needed.