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Night Vision Goggles Scarce In U.S.

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The Associated Press

Published: June 5, 2008

MADISON, Wis. - The war in Iraq is creating a major - and perhaps deadly - shortage of night vision goggles for civilian pilots who fly medical helicopters in the United States.

The National Transportation Safety Board has encouraged the use of such equipment since 2006 to reduce the risk of deadly nighttime crashes during emergency medical flights. But air ambulance services that fly sick or injured people to the hospital have been put on waiting lists of a year or more by makers of night vision gear because the U.S. military has contracts that give it priority.

"The war in Iraq escalated, and the goggles weren't available," said Gary Sizemore, president of the National EMS Pilots Association and a pilot in Perry. "We were put on a waiting list."

Sizemore estimated only 25 percent of the 800 emergency medical helicopters in the United States have the technology. He said he would like such gear on his helicopter so he could better navigate the dark pine forest he routinely flies over in northern Florida.
Night vision goggles take the tiny amount of light from the stars or the moon and amplify it hundreds of times, enabling the pilot to see in the dark and avoid flying into mountains, wires or other obstructions. The NTSB said the technology could have prevented 13 of 55 crashes of medical helicopters it analyzed in the 2006 report.

Since that study, five U.S. medical helicopters have crashed in the dark, killing 16 people, according to an NTSB database. An NTSB spokesman said it was not clear from the preliminary reports how many of the helicopters lacked night vision gear. The accidents are under investigation, and it is not known whether such equipment would have made a difference.

The shortage came into focus last month after one of those crashes, in which a helicopter used by the University of Wisconsin Hospital program slammed into a bluff, killing three. The copter had no night vision gear.

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