Night Vision Goggles Have Been Incredible Donor Investment

Your gifts can take flight. Supporting Mercy Flight through Benefis Foundation provides equipment and training for safer rides for patients and flight teams.

Flight Paramedic Christian Lee was 5 years old when Mercy Flight became one of the first air ambulances in Montana to secure night vision goggles in 2004.

With wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to supply, manufacturers had few night vision goggles they could spare for civilian purposes. When Benefis was able to secure some after a delay of more than 300 days, the flight crew was told to expect to get a decade’s use from them.

This year, the goggles turned 20 and remain in pristine condition despite constant use.

Donors contributed $36,000 toward the purchase of three sets of goggles.

Flight paramedic Rosie Rosalez remembers when the goggles arrived.

Using them adds “an incredible safety aspect,” he said. “It didn’t change operations, but it made everything we do safer.”

The goggles help the crew find those in need faster. The light of a cellphone or a single cigarette can be enough to spot a scene in the dark with the goggles on.

“People always give landmarks like ‘past the farmhouse with the white roof,’ but from 2,000 feet up, you see a lot of farmhouses,” Rosie said. “These things help bring people in.”

He’s been part of education efforts with rural volunteer fire departments on landing zones, but sometimes they still will be directed to fields with large rocks or powerlines.

“We’ve encountered obstacles that would have been catastrophic if we hadn’t had the goggles,” he said. “These come in very handy.”

The pilot wears one set of goggles and at least one member of the flight crew wears another set, flight nurse Anna Pradere explained. They make landing outside an airport, such as at a car wreck, “feel safer.”

Mercy Flight can’t accept a mission unless they can perform it without goggles, but the goggles add a layer of safety in darkness, rain, and fog, said Scott Schandelson, manager of Benefis Mercy Flight.

The helicopter used to carry heavy-duty search lights instead. Sometimes the light was so hot it set grass on fire when the helicopter landed. The goggles also mean less weight on the helicopter.

The goggles are used constantly and across shifts, but Mercy Flight has been “good stewards” of these resources donors provided, Scott said. “We appreciate what they make possible for us and the people we serve.”