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The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office specializes in
precision long-line rescues with its Bell 407,
call sign “Henry-1.” Sonoma County Sheriff’s
Office Photo |
The Sonoma County Sheriff's Office routinely conducts precision long-line rescues, but it's not every day that it flies a dog at the end of that long line.
With its Bell 407, “Henry-1,” the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office conducts around 75 precision long-line rescues per year — so many that “you just kind of get used to it,” as chief pilot Paul Bradley puts it. In October, however, Bradley and Tactical Flight Officer Debbie Little performed one of their more unusual rescues when they saved a man and his dog stranded on the cliffs of Bodega Head, a promontory on California's Pacific Coast.
Elk Grove, Calif. resident Gary Webb and his wife, Darla, were walking their dogs along a Bodega Head trail on the afternoon of Oct. 17 when their black Labrador, Bella (who “loves to swim,” Gary Webb explained) began scrambling down a cliff towards the water. Bella slipped on loose dirt and gravel and ended up on a precarious ledge, 100-plus feet above the ocean.
Webb followed — “I thought I could get down there safely,” he said. However, he himself became stranded on a more secure ledge about 25 feet away from the dog. After about a half-hour, Darla Webb sought the assistance of a State Parks ranger and the decision was made to radio for Henry-1. (The sheer cliffs of Bodega Head “aren't user-friendly,” Bradley explained. “Basically the only options are we get them, or they fall.)
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Conducting long-line rescues demands extensive training and practice for
both pilot and rescuer. Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office Photo |
By the time the helicopter arrived on the scene, seven minutes after the call, Webb and Bella had been on the cliff for around 40 minutes; the weather was cool and winds were a brisk 25 miles per hour. Bradley and Little observed that Bella was in a particularly unstable position: not only because she was close to a sheer drop-off, but because her paws were tangled in her leash. Because the dog was a substantial distance from her owner, any possibility of rescuing Webb and Bella in a single extraction was “out the window,” Bradley and Little recalled. Although the rescuers would normally have given precedence to Webb, in this case they determined that he was not in any immediate danger and elected to save the dog first.
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TFO Debbie Little rescued the dog Bella
with a harness improvised out of webbing
and a “bear hug.” The affectionate
dog was licking her face during the
rescue, Little recalled.
Christopher Turner Photo | “We don't have any rescue devices to rescue a dog,” Bradley noted. So Little carried webbing with her as Bradley lowered her, at the end of a 100-foot long line, to the ledge where Bella was standing. It was a tricky operation: “If I had pushed her into the dog, she could have knocked the dog off,” Bradley said. However, it went off without a hitch, with Bradley lowering Little to the exact location where she needed to be to perform the rescue.
“Paul is so precise — he really is talented,” Little said. “I couldn't really stand anywhere so Paul had to hold me there.”
Little wrapped the webbing around Bella and grabbed the 70-pound dog “in a bear hug,” she recalled. Then Bradley raised her to the top of the cliff, where a Parks ranger took charge of Bella while Bradley lowered Little to Webb to complete the rescue. The entire operation took less than two minutes.
“This is so unique to this helicopter crew — no one else around here can rescue a man and his 70-pound dog in less than two minutes,” observed Sgt. Dave Thompson of the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office.
Webb and Bella were examined on the scene by a Henry-1 paramedic, who found no injuries.
The Sonoma Sheriff's Office gets great mileage out of its single-engine Bell 407, which is generally available 24/7 for missions including law enforcement, fire suppression, advanced life support medical transport, and search and rescue. While the program conducts diverse operations over multiple jurisdictions, Henry-1 crews keep particularly busy with search and rescue: Sonoma County's rugged coastline, winding roadways and many outdoor recreational opportunities (including abalone diving, mountain biking, all-terrain-vehicle riding, boating, climbing and hiking) make for plenty of rescue opportunities. For speed, accuracy and versatility, the unit favors long-line rescues — such as the one conducted in the case of Webb and Bella — over other rescue techniques.
“The crews that execute long line rescues are experts in this technique,” said Thompson. They also undergo intensive and regular training. Bradley, who has been with the Sheriff's Office since 2002, had extensive long-line experience prior to joining the unit. Still, “when you put a human on the bottom of the line, it's a mental thing you have to get over,” he observed. Henry-1 pilots begin their long-line training by stacking 55-gallon drums on top of each other; when they've mastered that, they're ready to move onto the tricky stuff. Meanwhile, the TFOs such as Little who fly at the end of the 50-, 100- or 200-foot long lines spend long hours practicing technical rope work and rescue techniques.
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Pilot Paul Bradley and TFO Debbie
Little inside Henry-1.
Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office Photo | The Sonoma County Sheriff's Office started doing basic short-haul helicopter rescues in 1972, and has now been doing long-line rescues for two decades. Other notable missions accomplished by the Henry-1 crews have included evacuating parents and an infant off of a sinking boat; conducting long-line rescues at night; locating lost hikers by spotting the lights of their cell phones through NVGs; and responding to injured suspects and law enforcement officers. Although the Bell 407 has served the Sheriff's Office well, in the future, it is looking to upgrade to a new, twin-engine Bell 429 to continue its diverse work.
For more information about Henry-1, see www.henry1.com.
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