‘You got me from the middle of nowhere to the best hospital in Alaska in a couple of hours. Simply amazing!’
Edited by David Sefton
RIPCORD'S EVAC HELO LANDING IN THE ARCTIC TO RETRIEVE OUTDOOR TELEVISION PERSONALITY
Catastrophes never occur when you expect it or can plan for it. When you're a member of the small fraternity of adventuring hunters in the world you have to have a back up plan. Things can go wrong in the time interval of a heartbeat and have life long consequences.
Every hunter's back up plan should include communication capable of reaching the outside world, and many times this means sat phones, AND membership in one of the emergency medical rescue services. In Mark Peterson's instance, many of the services wouldn't have even attempted to retrieve him. RIPCORD was out and picking him up within hours. That difference many times can be a life or death decision - what service do I use?
Over the weekend, Redpoint operations rescued professional sportsman and Ripcord Rescue Travel Insurance TM client Mark Peterson by helicopter from the Arctic Circle, after his airboat hit a rock and Peterson crashed head-first into the windshield.
Peterson is the co-host of the Sportsman Channel’s “Cabela’s Instinct: Expedition Series” and was traveling in the far reaches of northern Alaska when the accident happened. His TV crew contacted Redpoint with their Iridium satellite phone, which in the Arctic has uneven coverage and can experience outages of several minutes at a time. Through the intermittent calls, Redpoint confirmed the team’s grid coordinates, and deployed a rescue helicopter.
“Just as we were starting out our ride I bent over to pick up my spotting scope from the floor so it wouldn’t bounce around on the ride,” Peterson said afterward. “At that moment we hit a rock in the river that put the airboat to a complete stop and sent me flying head first into the glass window, breaking it with my head.”
The rescue helicopter arriving at the landing zone
The helicopter arrived in the darkness, and Peterson was taken to the best trauma unit in Alaska for evaluation, and fortunately, tests revealed no broken neck or other catastrophic injuries.
“With the help of Ripcord Rescue Travel Insurance I was flown by helicopter out of our camp to Anchorage for testing,” Peterson continued. “Luckily, after running X-rays, CAT scans, and a MRI on me all the tests came back good and I don’t have any major injuries and am just extremely sore.
I can’t thank everybody with me in the field enough for acting so quick to get me stabilized and all the friends and family that have sent me their prayers and wishes, thank you all so much.
To the amazing people at Ripcord you can bet I’ll be a member for the rest of my life. You got me from the middle of nowhere to the best hospital in Alaska in a couple hours and kept my wife and family updated the whole way. Simply amazing!!!”
Ripcord Rescue Travel Insurance™ combines the best medevac and rescue insurance with travel insurance benefits such as trip cancellation, trip interruption, lost baggage, primary medical expense coverages, and more. Ripcord is powered by Redpoint Resolutions, a medical and travel risk security company owned and operated by special operations veterans and physicians.
Redpoint covers over 9 million people worldwide.
Some content excerpted with permission from: http://www.ripcordrescuetravelinsurance.com/professional-sportsman-mark-peterson-medically-evacuated-airboat-crash-arctic/