{"id":419165,"date":"2026-05-09T07:19:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T07:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/419165\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T07:19:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T07:19:11","slug":"chopper-appeal-month-firefighters-heart-attack-rescue-shows-need","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/419165\/","title":{"rendered":"Chopper Appeal Month: Firefighter\u2019s heart attack rescue shows need"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThey lay me on a bed pretty quickly and told me I was having a heart attack.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown said he couldn\u2019t appreciate the intensity of what was going on. <\/p>\n

The staff made him comfortable but also broke the news to him that no cardiac specialists were working that weekend. He needed to be flown to Auckland.<\/p>\n

\"MitchellMitchell Brown spent his first night in hospital in 60 years after a coronary emergency saw him airlifted by the rescue helicopter.<\/p>\n

Northern Rescue\u2019s Whang\u0101rei-based helicopters were busy on other jobs, so one was flown up from Auckland, with a doctor and critical care paramedic on board.<\/p>\n

Brown was flown to Auckland City Hospital for urgent care. It was his first night in hospital in almost 60 years.<\/p>\n

The next day, he received a stent in his right coronary artery and was sent home two days later.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a kink in my hose is how I describe it in firefighting terms, and the cardiac team straightened it out,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He is one of more than 30,000 people to have used the service. In more than 37 years of operation, Northland Emergency Services Trust, which runs Northland Rescue Helicopters<\/a>, has saved thousands of lives.<\/p>\n

But the service doesn\u2019t come cheap.<\/p>\n

\"AA Northland Rescue Helicopter in action. Photo \/ Sarah Curtis<\/p>\n

Northland Emergency Services Trust chairman Paul Ahlers<\/a> said money raised went towards operational costs such as new equipment, maintenance and staff training.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike everything, these things cost more and more each year, and we rely on the generosity of our community to keep our choppers in the air, providing first-class medical care in their times of greatest need.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last year, the appeal raised $46,350 for Northland\u2019s rescue choppers. To donate this year, visit chopperappeal.co.nz<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThey lay me on a bed pretty quickly and told me I was having a heart attack.\u201d Brown…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":419166,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6375,89,17517,6256,118499,53851,7572,2862,47065,12858,424,5430,4486,5971,111,43,139,24926,69,8527,17162,3757,2552,418,32561],"class_list":["post-419165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-appeal","tag-attack","tag-because","tag-brown","tag-chopper","tag-firefighter","tag-firefighters","tag-heart","tag-helicopter","tag-knows","tag-life","tag-mitchell","tag-month","tag-need","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-northlands","tag-nz","tag-rescue","tag-saved","tag-seasoned","tag-service","tag-shows","tag-value"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}