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.
The needling, Seattle’s lovely local onion style rag, has a very reasonable response:
Per Wikipedia
the average home price [in Laurelhurst] is approximately $1.85 million […] The LCC has also restricted parking for hospital staff in the surrounding area, requiring employees to use a satellite lot and shuttle. The council has opposed hospital expansion efforts since the 1980s.
No sympathy. They want all the benefits of being rich and privileged in a society, but don’t believe they should have to accommodate anyone else in that society. They’re wannabe-Lords who don’t care if the peasants suffer, add long as the view (and noise) from the Manor House is pretty.
Oh, Laurelhurst.
When the food riots start, remember that the U District / U Village is basically next door to you, and ya’ll are very old and slow.
The lack of empathy is nauseating. Imagine making it your business to harass and hobble a children’s hospital for 40-odd years.
2021, we’re all in the depths of the covid crisis, hospital staff are already beyond overworked, and you’re gonna moan that they haven’t provided documentation to justify last month’s emergencies to a frigging community council group?
Rotten little over-entitled hoarders. Good on the people keeping this filthy business in the public eye.
The vice president is Pat Chaney. She retired from Oracle before taking up that mantle. She’s the one who specifically is requesting the reason for each of the children being flown to be reported to her.
Yes, Oracle. That Oracle.
Ooh. That tracks.
My proposal: fly helicopters over the area several times a day, with no patients on board. This will normalize the sound of helicopters, which they apparently find so horribly intrusive and disruptive.
Since there is nobody to bill, spread the costs among this community, perhaps focusing on the loudest complainers. I suspect the “problem” will somehow resolve itself after that.
Unfortunately you’re talking about people who are incredibly rich and don’t view fees as a deterrent at all. They willingly pay for the flight records of each of these helicopter flights and demand the reason for why the children had to be flown each time.
I know. I’m imagining a world where the rule of law actually exists to serve the public.
fucking ghouls.
Must be nice, having a life where your biggest problem is the occasional helicopter flying overhead.
The occasional helicopter carrying a dying child - those in particular are the most annoying when one is wallowing about in their giant, empty houses hating on the rest of humanity.
If I were one of those patients (or their parent) whose life-saving helicopter ride unfortunately made one of those special people hear a “whup whup whup” in the distance, I’d be writing letters to everyone who complained at that meeting and their next few neighbors in every direction. Might be a coin toss to determine whether the complainer gets the polite or rude version.
Unlikely to be read by them anyway but hopefully some shit-stirring with others nearby would spill over. If Nextdoor is any indication, neighbor drama always sells.
Next Laurelhurst community meeting is set for May 11, 2026.
I think there will be quite a few new faces since this has hit the news again.
I’m not sure the Laurelhurst neighborhoods kids need to be treated at that hospital.
