Two losses in one week...

Last week, pretty much a week ago, our industry lost 2 teams.  Six members of our HEMS community lost their lives in crashes, one in Ohio and one in Alaska.  I didn't know any of them personally, but had mutual friends with at least one of the crews.  A former pilot at my program now flies with the company that lost a 407 in Ohio, I was relieved that it wasn't him piloting the aircraft.  There is a great sense of loss industry wide over these losses.  Speculation is rampant about who/what was at fault for the tragedies, but you know what, in the end, it really doesn't matter who was at fault, at least not in my book. Eventually the FAA crash investigators will figure out what happened to make the 407 crash in Ohio.  At the writing of this blog there has been little to no evidence of the crash of the King Air 200 in Alaska.

Loss is very odd, I know I should feel something, but I really don't have any overpowering emotions about the crashes.  Not that I don't think they are sad or that they are tragedies or that we feel a loss in the industry, but I guess its something that we know going into this field, we know that there is an outlying chance that we can crash for many numbers of reasons and be killed in the operation of our jobs.  We do everything that we can to minimize those risks, but they are still there.  On some level we have all come to terms with those risks and have internalized them.

I know that if or when this happens to someone closer to me, I'll have a different view on the subject, but for the time being I don't.

Ronald Regan had a quote that he used in his address after the space shuttle Challenger blew up

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God."

I don't believe that they are now in heaven or that they are actually touching the face of God, however I do believe (assuming that they were right with God) that the next image they will see is Jesus at his second coming and the shattered bodies that they knew or didn't fully know on this earth will be changed and at that time they will touch the face of God.