Emergency Airlift owner and pilot Ed Langerveld discusses a flight with John Haynes, medical flight personnel, before takeoff at the Roseburg Regional Airport last week.

Ed Langerveld flies one of Emergency Airlift's three helicopters over Roseburg last Saturday.

Langerveld takes off from the Roseburg Regional Airport.

Emergency Airlift, Roseburg’s closest emergency-aviation provider, shaves more minutes from transport time for trauma and critically injured patients in Douglas County than any other company in the region.

Last month, the North Bend-based air ambulance company added three helicopters to its emergency medical services fleet. With the extra versatility, Emergency Airlift has the ability to fly from hospital to hospital and also respond to trauma and critically injured patients on-site in a 100-mile radius from Roseburg.

“If we’re saving more than 10 minutes’ transport time for the patient, generally that’s what matters,” said Ed Langerveld, owner and director of operations for Emergency Airlift.

Though Mercy Medical Center does not yet have a helicopter pad, hospital spokeswoman Kathleen Nickel said one has been proposed to accommodate Emergency Airlift and is currently under internal review. Nickel could not provide a timeline for when construction might begin.

Though the whirlybirds and other aircraft are constantly moving among five base locations, two of them will be solely dedicated as EMS helicopters at the Roseburg Regional Airport and the Southwest Oregon Regional Airport in North Bend, a first for both airports.

The rest of the EMS fleet, comprised of 10 emergency transport jets, including four Turbo Commanders, two Jetstreams, two Westwind jets, one Metroliner and one Learjet, is in a constant-rotation basis among the five air ambulance bases in Oregon, California, Nevada and Guam.

“We bounce around,” Langerveld said, “but we’re still by far the closest in the area.”

Emergency Airlift has been serving the Roseburg community from North Bend for five years. But it wasn’t until the company began leasing the airport’s fixed-base-operator’s hangar in January 2007 that it had a station in Roseburg where it could load patients during cold and wet weather. The company also keeps a plane stationed at the hangar when icy conditions and fog do not permit landings.

“It will basically save lives because we can get out when no one can get in,” Langerveld said.

When none of the fleet is stationed in Roseburg, Langerveld said a Turbo Commander or a helicopter can make the trip from North Bend in 15 minutes or 25 minutes, respectively.

Langerveld said Emergency Airlift can transport a patient by helicopter from Roseburg to Portland in an hour and 15 minutes.

Hospital calls are the bulk of Langerveld’s business.

However, for $35, Emergency Airlift offers household families a year of air ambulance service.

Emergency Airlift contracts its own Intensive Care Unit nurses. John Haynes, a full-time nurse at Mercy, works part time for Langerveld and said most of the trips he’s been a part of go to Eugene, North Bend or Portland. But he’s also been to Spokane and Boise.

“We carry enough on the plane where we can do back-to-back-to-back calls, and never come back here again,” Haynes said. “And that has happened before.”

Langerveld, 50, has been in the air ambulance business for about 25 years. A native of Hillsboro but a resident of Florence, he said he was set to retire early. But when he witnessed an injured girl wait for hours for an ambulance following a boating accident at a coastal lake, he realized the central coast had a need for emergency aviation.

After four years of service, Langerveld said he had become frustrated that Emergency Airlift sometimes could not fly into Roseburg. And then the fixed-base-operator became available.

“We’re pretty heavily invested now at the airport,” Langerveld said. “We were really just waiting for this building to open up.”