UPDATE: 3:15 p.m.
Coast Guard spokesman Petty Officer 3rd Class David Graham said the search for three missing Hawaii Life Flight crew members is expected to continue throughout the night and into Saturday morning.
“Our main objective is the missing crew members and that is why we are putting every effort we can with every available asset on the islands, within the islands, to find the missing crew members,” Graham said at a news briefing held at the Coast Guard Base Honolulu this afternoon.
Weather conditions in the search area are favorable at this time in contrast to Thursday night.
“Last night the weather was foul to a degree. There was some wind and some rain but today there are prime searching conditions,” Graham said.
UPDATE 2:35 p.m.
As the search for a missing Hawaii Life Flight medical aircraft continues, an emergency proclamation from Gov. Josh Green will allow at least one out-of-state medical aircraft and two Black Hawk helicopters from the U.S. Army National Guard to help shore up a shortage of air ambulances transporting patients between islands.
After reports that the Hawaii Life Flight aircraft was missing Thursday evening, the company issued a “safety stand down,” grounding the seven other aircraft normally used to transport patients between islands.
Speedy Bailey, regional director of American Medical Response Hawaii, said in a news conference this afternoon at the governor’s state Capitol office, that the stand down is “a time to take care of our caregivers and deal with the issues that surround incidents and accidents like this.”
Staff aren’t working either unless they volunteer to do so, Bailey said. AMR, which operates under parent company Global Medical Response, owns Hawaii Life Flights.
Medical crews from the East Coast and a medical jet from the West Coast will arrive Saturday morning to help fill the shortage of air transportation, Green said. Some local medical staff who can assist will also be assigned to do so.
Two Black Hawk helicopters, with U.S. National Guard medical crews, will also be made available until the jet arrives. One is already on Oahu, and the other will be stationed on Kauai or Hawaii island. State Department of Health Director Elizabeth Char at the news conference said some AMR helicopters available in the state also have the capacity to cross open ocean.
Green said the measures in place ensure that medical services will be available as needed.
“We have to provide services to all the people of Hawaii if they get so sick in a place where they don’t have access yo the care they need and have to come over here to Oahu,” Green said. “We’re ensuring people that services to get to our more comprehensive service hospitals will be available.”
Green’s emergency proclamation will expire on midnight, Dec. 27, he said at the news conference.
Green said the air ambulance shortage is a reminder that Hawaii needs more comprehensive medical services around the state, which would reduce the need to transport patients to Oahu.
Green said typically that 10-15 transfers are made a day.
Green said he’s “holding out hope” for any survivors of the missing flight.
12:05 p.m.
Gov. Josh Green said he has issued an emergency proclamation this morning in response to the Hawaii Life Flight medical transport plane that went missing off the coast of Maui Thursday night while enroute to pick up a patient located on Hawaii island.
“Hawaii’s medical airlift capacity must be supplemented,” he said in a joint written statement with state Health Director Elizabeth “Libby” A. Char. “The Emergency Proclamation gives our state the ability to supplement Hawaii’s medical airlift capacity with aircraft and flight crews from other states and permits out-of-state actively licensed and certified emergency medical personnel to be employed as certified flight paramedics and registered nurses on medical transport aircrafts.”
Green said his administration is “coordinating efforts between Hawaii Life Flight, the state Department of Health, the Army National Guard, all county mayors, the Coast Guard, and medical facilities and personnel throughout the state and on the mainland, to ensure continuity and uninterrupted emergency transport services between the islands.”
The primary focus is augmenting services to the neighbor islands and deploying extra capacity for critical care needs, the statement said.
Previous coverage:
The U.S. Coast Guard continued its search this morning for a Hawaii Life Flight aircraft operated by Global Medical Response that went off radar while enroute to pick up a patient on Hawaii island Thursday night.
The medical transport flight with three crew members reportedly went off radar at 9:27 p.m. There were no patients onboard at the time.
“Global Medical Response can confirm that one of our Hawaii Life Flight emergency fixed-wing airplanes based in Maui, went off radar while enroute to pick up a patient in Waimea, Big Island,” a company spokesperson said in a statement this morning.
“We are working with the Coast Guard and rescue teams, providing all information, including last known coordinates,” the company said.
The company has temporarily halted all Hawaii Life Flight transports.
The Federal Aviation Administration issued an alert notice to public safety agencies, pilots and airports at around 9:30 p.m., triggering a search for the missing aircraft.
The U.S. Coast Guard notified the FAA that it located a debris field about 16 miles south of Hana in the area that a Beechcraft King Air 90 twin-engine prop plane lost radar contact and went missing, FAA officials said this morning.
The aircraft departed Kahului Airport and was headed to the Waimea-Kohala Airport at the time it went missing. Coast Guard officials said. They said the Honolulu Control Facility reported losing radar contact with the plane about 15 nautical miles south of Hana.
A Coast Guard aircraft reported seeing a sheen in the search area and a patrol boat recovered debris from the area “with no confirmation that it is from the aircraft,” officials said.
The Coast Guard’s Cutter William Hart, MH-65 Dolphin helicopter, C-130 plane and a patrol boat from Coast Guard Station Maui continued searching an area between Maui and the Big Island in stormy conditions this morning.
Hawaii Life Flight has been providing air medical transportation in Hawaii 24 hours a day, 7 days a week since 2010, according to the company’s website.
This was the second downed aircraft in Hawaii Thursday. At around noon at Lihue Airport on Kauai, two people were hurt after a privately owned single-engine plane crashed just after takeoff.
