Berkeley County building helipads to increase emergency response times

BERKELEY COUNTY, S.C. (WCBD) — Berkeley County officials are utilizing a unique way of lowering emergency response times in the county. 

Berkeley County Supervisor Johnny Cribb says the county is in the midst of building several helicopter landing pads designed to lower incident response times. 

“We took on that project, as you know, there’s been several cases where we have bridges shut down. An emergency medical services are a big issue, emergency services all around our big issue. We were trying to figure out how we could best get folks off the island,” Cribb said. 

Berkeley used county employees to build the pad, which kept the cost to just over $56,000. 

“One of the biggest benefits of this site is whenever you have to land a helicopter; it takes every public safety service there, and a lot of them. It takes the fire department, the sheriff’s office, and it takes ultimately, the EMS personnel, just to clear an area and safely land a helicopter. A lot of times, it requires shutting down traffic for hours or canceling a soccer game because you have to land on the field,” Cribb explained. 

The pads feature built-in lighting so helicopters can have increased visibility when landing. Only the ambulance is on sight to transport the victim. The helicopter can get from here to area hospitals in just two to seven minutes, depending on which hospital it is headed to. 

“Then we asked the pilots where else could we benefit from these in the rest of the county? And we asked them without guessing we asked them if could y’all go back and look at a map of the county and come back to us with some ideas on where we could put these, and we’re committed as a county council to do that,” Cribb said.

The Berkeley County Councilmembers have already approved the building of two more helipads. Cribb says they will readily build more later if needed. 

The next two helipads could be built within the next year.