Yes, it looked absolutely frightening. But yes, she's fine. Apart from some nausea. Which is, y'know, understandable.
Although she was spinning around and moving out of her way, the rescued woman in question is doing just fine.
The video shows a 75-year old woman being rescued from Piestewa Peak in Arizona by a hoist from a helicopter. As she's drawn up in a basket, the video shows the gurney spinning incredibly fast as it rises slowly up into the helicopter, prompting a huge reaction on social media.
WILD HELICOPTER RESCUE: Firefighters say a 74-year-old woman had to be flown off of Piestewa Peak this morning after she suffered an injury while hiking.
STORY: https://t.co/H4HavJnsgn pic.twitter.com/2FPQR0qiZ9— FOX 10 Phoenix (@FOX10Phoenix) June 4, 2019
Well, as it turns out, the woman in question is doing just fine. The spinning, meanwhile, was caused by a side effect of down wash from the helicopter's rotors and is a common occurrence in hoist rescues. Essentially, as you draw the basket up closer to the helicopter, the air flow begins to interact with the basket and causes the spin. Normally, there are lines attached that stop it from happening, but given that the rescue was in a valley, the effect of the rotor wash was more condensed and pronounced.
As explained by the helicopter pilots in a press conference after the video went viral, they've carried out over 200 hoist rescues and of those rescues, this type of thing has happened twice.
"We train for this, it's not something that is inherent to the basket, it's just something that occurs every now and then," said Paul Apaulnar, one of the pilots who took part in the rescue. For now, the woman was taken to hospital where, aside from her injuries, she suffered from some dizziness and nausea.
Yeah, no sh*t.