Amazing things can happen when we work together as a community.
Recently, residents of a small town in Alaska assisted a medevac plane with landing on a dark runway. They used their vehicles to light the runway allowing the transport plane to safely land and takeoff again.
“It was very heartwarming,” a community health aide at the Deering Clinic told ABC News. “We all came together to make it possible and then it was so cool when the medevac landed; the Northern Lights came out.”
According to John Perreault, information officer at the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, the runway lights at the airport had been out since December 14 after ice and gravel damaged the system.
So when one of Deering, Alaska’s smallest residents needed to be flown to another hospital to receive treatment, the community banded together in order to assist the medevac plane with landing on a darkened runway.
Staff at the Deering Clinic reached out to the community and asked for help.
In a town with less than 200 people, residents showed up with over 30 vehicles which they used to help light the runway.
The vehicles parked at a safe distance and lined up as if their headlights were the lights on the runway.
“We’re terrifically proud of the community spirit that Deering showed and the bravery of the pilots of the medevac who were able to work under adverse conditions,” Perreault said.
“Everybody came together and did their part to save the patient,” airport worker Calvin Moto told Anchorage Daily News. “I knew there would be definitely people willing to participate, but it just turned out to be that the whole runway was lit by the vehicles.”
The lights on the runway has since been fixed, and thanks to the town’s residents the patient was able to receive the treatment they needed.
Amazing effort by all involved! Had it not been for each and every single person this would not have been possible.
It really does take a village…
Please share this heartwarming story.
