5 ms·
Red Cross honors Igiugig woman for helping light runway during nighttime medevac
- goatcode 5y agoSo?
- lifeisstillgood 5y agoOh come on. Was this heroic personal bravery, sword flashing agains the oncoming horde. No. But human society is evolving, and we need new heroes now. Heroes that can persuade us all to act in concert, who can organise as much as fight. The problems of the 21C don't need armies, they need ... whatever happened here. Quite simply, do you have the phone numbers of enough people in your town to light up a runway. I live in a town of 2,000 houses, probably 2 cars per house. I am afraid to say I could not light up a rabbit hutch with my contacts list.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dang 5y agoPlease don't post unsubstantive comments or be a jerk on HN. We're hoping for something different here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dharmab 5y agoWBM: https://web.archive.org/web/20210519200046/https://www.alaskapublic.org/2021/05/19/red-cross-honors-igiugig-woman-for-helping-light-runway-during-late-night-medevac/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210519200046/https://www.alask...
- mc32 5y agoIt’s kinda the thing fire departments or police do when a citizen goes above and beyond what’s expected. They’ll present an award to create an atmosphere of cooperation and bonhomie. Whether minutia is of interest is up to you.
- lsb 5y agoIt's amazing to see how people come together in times of duress, and how people understand their relative responsibilities to each other when they know they have no one else but each other. (It's also a mixed bag. I'm sure, if the plane could have landed, she would rather have taken a more leisurely steam.)
- JetAlone 5y agoYeah, on display is not only her individual heroism to rally her town, but her entire community's selfless assistance of those in need. It's important to embody that.
- notwhereyouare 5y agoIf it was the pilots home airport, probably. Night landings are a whole separate beast, and they aren’t easy due to shifting perspective
- chanandler_bong 5y agoWow... I lived in Dillingham for several years, and have been to Igiugig several times. Never ever would have thought I'd read about it on the web, let alone HackerNews.
- ceocoder 5y agoThat’s fascinating! Care to share more about your experience living there? Alaska has always been a place with so much intrigue for me. Also - shouldn’t your username be miss_chanandler_bong :)
- trilinearnz 5y agoTruly heartwarming. Hope in humanity is returned!
- aksss 5y agoConspicuously absent from the story is why the lights were out in the first place, but good job, her.
- whats_a_quasar 5y agoIt's a small town in a remote area, I expect the answer is simply that things break and take time to be fixed. And I bet nighttime landings are uncommon
- aksss 5y agoThe government funds the airport, the lights, the runway like at every small village in Alaska that has an airport. It’s because local ‘kids’ broke them all running by on quads with bats for funsies, counting on the feds or state to just replace them time after time - it costs the village nothing until it does. Rando source with lede buried in bottom paragraph but I’m sure one could find more local ones with some digging: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/the-runway-lights-failed-so-villagers-used-their-headlights-to-aid-an-airlift/ https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/the-runway-lights-...
- fencepost 5y agoIt's likely that night landings in a town of less than 60 people are uncommon - particularly in August when sunset ranges between 9:30 and 10:45 PM depending on when in the month it is. If it was early in the month they may have just barely missed being able to land without lights.
- aksss 5y agoYou don’t need to speculate, it’s known - see reply to adjacent comment. The lights are broken in acts of vandalism by the residents, regularly.
- fencepost 5y agoInteresting, I wonder if there's a direct economic benefit when someone comes in to fix the lights (along with possibly vandalism for the sake of breaking something and maybe a sense of making the state pay for perceived wrongs).
- MattGaiser 5y ago> When the plane didn’t land, she went to the runway manager. One of the fascinating dynamics of small towns is the casualness of interactions like this as everyone knows everyone and it is considered perfectly appropriate to try and talk to anyone. The plane didn't land, so she went to see the runway manager. She just did. I wonder how often this happens in big cities. Do people ever email the airport to ask why a plane missed an approach?
- cl0ckt0wer 5y agoThings like this don't scale. Imagine how much flight control would get done if anyone could walk in there and strike up a conversation.
- MattGaiser 5y agoOh, no they do not, but is it a case of 100 people contacting the airport and being ignored or does awareness of it not scaling mean that a runway manager in NY is asked less than one in remote Alaska?
- nexuist 5y agoI mean...at a bigger airport the runway would just have built-in lighting, a situation like this one would never occur. Even at un-monitored (read: no ATC) airports the pilots themselves can turn on/off the lights via radio command, or the airport authorities just keep the lights on during night time or bad weather. Nobody would have to call up the airport manager because the problem would be dealt with. EDIT: I see now that the airport did have lights, but they happened to be out. Unfortunately the article gives no information as to why they were out, so I have no idea how that happened / was allowed.
- Grustaf 5y agoI don't think it is meant to scale to commercial airports.
- peteretep 5y agoI have some dealings with the Isle of Man. It is only a slight exageration to say I have conversations with my accountant there where he says "I don't know the answer to that, but my mate Paddy is Finance Minister this year, so I'll check with him later"
- AnotherGoodName 5y agoA fun piece of history where a similar story occurred in regional Australia too. In this case it was a passenger aircraft that was lost at night. The townspeople heard it circling overhead and lit up the racetrack. Everyone survived and the plane took off again to continue the journey in better weather conditions. https://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2006/11/21/1793944.htm?site=goulburnmurray https://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2006/11/21/1793944.htm?... >Alderman Logan recommended that we should set up a runway with the aid of motor headlamps". >My brother said they wanted any body with a car to go to the Albury racecourse and form a circle and turn their lights on. > I can remember getting into the circle around the racecourse and the plane coming down. A big hooray went up. We got out of the cars to walk over and I can remember all of the talk that was going on and excitement and seeing the crew walk around. I can remember touching the plane.
- Grustaf 5y agoI used to live on a small island a few miles from Stockholm, we had the same thing, sometimes you'd hear a helicopter hovering above and then you'd go to the nearest landing spot with a flashlight...