Laurelhurst Community Council Isn’t Sure Helicopters Need to Land Sick Kids at the Hospital

Last week, the Seattle subreddit dredged up a long-time drama between the Laurelhurst neighborhood and Seattle Children’s Hospital about its helicopters.

Seattle Children’s is the go-to specialized pediatric care center for Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho. When children from near and far away need urgent treatment, they’ll get swooped up by a helicopter and taken to Seattle Children’s. This, the affluent North Seattle neighborhood will tell you, is quite the nuisance.

Such a nuisance that a neighborhood group wanted to make sure the hospital wasn’t landing flights on the helipad for non-emergency reasons, according to meeting minutes from 2021. “There needs to be a medical justification form for each flight (one was a broken leg for example),” said one member. In the six years of documented meetings The Stranger looked at, they had a lot more to say.