Plane Crashes Less Than Ten Miles from Home

https://www.wesh.com/article/2-dead-plane-crash-in-ocala/29654161#

I'm just now learning about it and will report more when I learn more. Before the plane crashed, it struck an SUV.

State highway 200 (College Rd.) is a heavy traffic road. For that reason, Mom and I are surprised that other cars were not affected.

Jeanette Isabelle

From what I can piece together, the plane crashed in an open area southwest of the AT&T store, on the northwest side of College R. (200).

https://www.google.com/maps/@29.1418503,-82.1942035,320m/data=!3m1!1e3

Jeanette Isabelle

I don't know why the SUV driver was airlifted to the nearest hospital. West Marion Community Hospital is less than two blocks away.

Jeanette Isabelle

There was another vehicle damaged in the crash. This video is shot in the AT&T Store parking lot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIOBiMUnygg

Jeanette Isabelle

Is the hospital near the crash site a Trauma Center? If not, or if it was not the right level of Trauma Center, that would explain why the injured was airlifted to a different hospital.

I visited their website. What little information it does give is not relevant to your question.

Jeanette Isabelle

There are several possible explanations. As Chaosmagnet mentioned, all hospitals are not created equal. The hospital two blocks away may not be a designated "Trauma Center". In addition, Trauma Centers are designated at various Levels. See Trauma Center Levels Explained. Level I are the highest level of care, for the most severely injured patients.

Also it could be that the nearby hospital's ER was already at capacity. Smaller hospitals often only have one or two ER physicians on duty. If they were already seeing patients, EMS might divert to another hospital where the ER was not as busy.

EMS Dispatch normally makes these decisions. In most places, they do a good job of getting patients to the right facilities, balancing level of care required, transport time, and available capacity of facilities.