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‘It’s very critical to have a service like this’

EAGLE III medical transportation helicopter has helped save lives for 25 years

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October 7, 2024

GREEN BAY – The Eagle (III) has landed – nearly 10,000 times.

For the past 25 years, EAGLE III – a helicopter providing rapid medical care to the critically ill and injured – has provided air medical transportation to communities in and around Northeast Wisconsin.

And if Shaun Stamnes, EAGLE III’s air medical coordinator has anything to say about it, it will be around for another 25 years – and beyond.

“Reaching 25 years of medical flights is a testament to the dedication and hard work of our entire team,” he said. “We have built a legacy of service excellence and are excited to continue our mission of providing high-quality, compassionate and rapid patient care. I was with the original group that started the program. You always walk into these things with a little trepidation, but we had a good plan, and it’s worked out for the community.”

Since 1999, Stamnes said EAGLE III crews have performed nearly 10,000 patient flights.

“That’s a big number,” he said. “That’s a lot of lives saved. We average about one and a half flights per day. That’s not counting ground transportation – just air flights.”

Stamnes said the scenario of the situation, the terrain and the distance from a medical center determines the number of flights EAGLE III can do daily.

“You also don’t want to over-fatigue your crew,” he said. “There are a lot of factors, but we’ve done five or six flights in a day at times, but most of those are short-legged flights.”

A vision 25 years ago

Stamnes, who is originally from North Dakota, said he’s been in Emergency Medical Services since 1984.

Upon moving to Green Bay, Stamnes said he was somewhat surprised Green Bay, a city of more than 100,000 residents, didn’t have an air medical program at the time.

Man standing in front of a helicopter on a landing.
Shaun Stamnes, EAGLE III’s air medical coordinator, said the number of daily flights depends on distance from a medical center. Photo Courtesy of EAGLE III

“I moved to Green Bay in the late ’80s,” he said. “I had a lot of friends who were involved in the air medical industry, and as medical transport has evolved, patients were becoming more and more complex. It finally reached a point where nationwide, specialty care transport was needed. Paramedics were being asked to do things that were beyond their skill set.”

From there, Stamnes said specialty training was developed through a couple of universities in the U.S.

“We sent some of our people through the training classes to come back to train with the plan to initially start with ground transport and evolve into air transport,” he said. “Our CEO worked with various hospitals, and we were able to show the need of patients who were overflying the Green Bay area to go to other facilities … and also patients who we were having to transport by ground to Milwaukee, Madison or Rochester, Minnesota. We looked at the amount of time they spent on the ground and how they would benefit by going by air. That helped the air medical program get up and running in the Green Bay area.”

What’s in a name?

At the beginning of the program, Stamnes said organizers held a contest for naming the service.

“Ultimately, the winning suggestion was ‘EAGLE,’ standing for ‘Emergency Air and Ground Life Express,’” he said. “The ‘III’ represented the three partners in the program: County Rescue, St. Vincent Hospital and Bellin Health. Over the years, the Emergency Air and Ground Life Express was dropped from the logo, and we simply continued with EAGLE III.” 

An example of use

Stamnes said as one might think, EAGLE III provides much support to rural areas of the state.

“Let’s say there is a critically ill or injured patient in a remote area, or even in a mountain situation (as an example)… ambulance and fire would be dispatched, but they can request the helicopter to respond directly to the scene,” he said.

While the helicopter is en route to the scene, Stamnes said paramedics on the ground can work on getting a patient stabilized and removed from immediate danger.

“The fire department will have set up a landing zone for us so we can come in with the advanced care providers, land right at the scene and give advanced care immediately to that patient,” he said. “That ambulance wouldn’t have to initiate transport and try to meet a paramedic unit en route somewhere. We can load that patient directly into the helicopter and fly them from that scene to the trauma center they need to go to much quicker than it would take a ground ambulance.”

Stamnes said traditional transport via ambulance could take up to an hour in certain situations, but EAGLE III can drastically cut that time.

“EAGLE III might cut that time down to 15 or 20 minutes,” he said. “It’s a huge time savings, and we see that in the improved outcomes at the end with the patient getting to that care faster.”

Another advantage, Stamnes said, is a helicopter could even land in a backyard if needed.

“Again, if it’s safe enough to do, EAGLE III can land almost anywhere,” he said. “As long as we have a large enough area to land – we do the training with all of the outlying fire and rescue services within our area. We do the training with them to determine what is a safe landing zone and how to talk the aircraft in. We can pretty much land anywhere under an emergency like that.”

With open-air space in front, Stamnes said EAGLE III doesn’t have to worry about the rigors of traveling by ground.

“We can fly a line straight to the hospital – no traffic or construction,” he said. “It’s very critical to have a service like this.”

Helicopters over the years

The scope of EAGLE III’s technological and life-saving abilities, Stamnes said, has grown immensely since the first medical flight in 1999.

“Our crews initially flew a VFR Bell 407 helicopter before upgrading to a SPIFR EC-135 in the early 2000s,” he said. “Our latest upgrade to the advanced Airbus EC-135 T2+ allows us to integrate new technology and additional supplies to continue to meet patient needs.”

Stamnes said when the organization started with the Bell 407, it had “very tight corners to work in.”

“Though it was a very good aircraft, we realized early on it wasn’t going to fit our needs (long-term),” he said. “We have worked very closely with the Green Bay hospital systems and also with St. Vincent and Bellin (hospitals) being our partner facilities. With the patient set they were starting to request we transport, we needed something more moving forward.”

That’s when Stamnes said the SPIFR EC-135 was purchased.

“Upgrading to the twin-engine EC-135 was a bit of a lift for us,” he said. “At that time, we were operating under our own operations certificate with the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration), so for us to move from the single-engine aircraft (Bell 407) to a twin was a bit challenging. We also went ahead and invested in safety to have full instrument capability so we could fly under instruments if necessary.”

Stamnes said the current helicopter being used, the Airbus EC-135 T2+, is like a flying emergency room.  

Two EMT workers pushing an injured person on a stretcher into a helicopter.
The inside of the EAGLE III has the latest medical technology, helping save the lives of critically ill and injured patients. Photo Courtesy of EAGLE III

“The helicopter we fly now can (accommodate) two patients if needed, but that’s a very rare instance,” he said. “We carry transport ventilators that are the latest on the market. We have cardiac monitoring IV pumps. We can do pressure line and arterial line monitoring. We can monitor patients’ blood pressures in real critical patients. We can be very specific with their blood pressure. We can pretty much do anything that is in the emergency room – it’s just in a smaller, more compact size.”

Air medical teams must be prepared for various situations, so Stamnes said it’s crucial to have state-of-the-art equipment to provide life-saving care.

“EAGLE III has upgraded to the Hamilton T1 ventilator, which is suitable for adults, children and newborns,” he said. “They’ve also adopted smaller IV infusion pumps and cardiac monitors, creating more space for crew and patients. EAGLE III has also taken opportunities to gain new skills and certifications since its first flight in 1999.”

More than medical transport

Stamnes said the EAGLE III team wants to be a resource for communities that goes beyond just medical transport.

One of the ways EAGLE III achieved this, he said, was by receiving FAA certification in November 2004 to conduct commercial Night Vision Goggle (NVG) operations.

Since the certification, EAGLE III has assisted in crucial services, such as search-and-assist flights for the communities they serve.

“We were the first program in the State of Wisconsin – and 13th in the nation – to be approved by the FAA to fly under NVG,” he said. “What that does – people see this on the news with the military – is you can have a black night with no moon, and you put these goggles on, and you can see everything around you. It’s just a green light, but you can see things that otherwise were invisible during the night. It was a huge safety improvement when we were doing night flying because now the pilots could see what was around them. They could see the terrain, any obstructions, things like that. That enhanced the safety of the program.”

Stamnes said under normal circumstances, helicopters have to fly under IFR (Visual Flight Rules).

“What that means is, pilots have to be able to see the ground at all times,” he said.

But in May 2002, Stamnes said EAGLE III received certification to fly in other situations.

“There are still regulations on minimum cloud height and things like that, but (through our certification), we can depart our base and fly into the clouds under the radar control of the FAA air traffic control. They direct the aircraft movement, and we could fly from Green Bay to Madison without ever seeing the ground in solid cloud cover. And then when we do an instrument approach into an airport, just like the airlines, you come out of the clouds, and the airport is in front of you. Having that capability allows us to fly under other conditions we would not have been able to do previously with our other aircraft.”

Stamnes said he hopes folks never need EAGLE III’s service.

“But if you do, it’s there for you,” he said.

To learn more about EAGLE III, visit eagle3.org.

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