Can you let someone die?

I live about 10 blocks away from a big city hospital, which is very close to the 101 South freeway.

There are a number of severe accidents that happen in a radius of several miles from that hospital, and, historically, an ambulance who gets to the scene typically doesn’t have enough time to get the victim to the hospital in time, thus the victim dies in transit.

Enter MEDEVAC, a helicopter outfit that wanted to build a helipad at the aforementioned hospital to transport those future 101 crash victims.

While the idea above may make logical sense, the community surrounding the hospital thought otherwise. They got together and started a petition to block the building of the landing field. Their reason?

The chopper is loud. And the hours when this chopper would be most in use would be between 10:00 p.m. and 3:00 a.m. (the time when most people are getting out of bars). If you already have a hard time getting to sleep, the last thing you want is a military-grade helicopter flying over your house at all hours of the morning.

And, if the chopper landing field does get approved, then people may fear for their property values… Who wants to buy a house that’s in the middle of a MEDEVAC landing strip.

Long story short, the community did successfully block the new heliport… I honestly didn’t vote for it, because the affected blocks weren’t in my direct neighborhood.

But, still, it had me thinking… The people who voted against the heliport are now going to make the chopper fly miles out of the way to a hospital that already has a helicoper landing strip in place.

This makes me think, “What is to become of the person who now dies in flight because they couldn’t get to the closer hospital?”

Does that make everyone in the community who voted against the above heliport responsible for that person’s death? And, if so, could the surviving vicims sue those who stopped the project?