Cellular service out in the western coastal states, btw--
very spotty. VERY. Particularly once away from the coastal-valley, I-5 corridor.
Just driving to the coast, there is a 20-30 MILE wide dead spot in my coverage with Verizon, and I mostly have no coverage while on the beach, either.
Also worthy of note-- at least in the PNW, Verizon coverage
tends to be dramatically better than AT&T outside of urban areas, and either one is several orders of magnitude better than any OTHER cellular carrier. There's a reason why relatively few people out here had iPhones until recently.
We're not philistines-- just pragmatic.
Great research on that subject, TT. I guess that I sort of knew most of that instinctively having grown up out here-- that LifeFlight wasn't 'on-call' to its members, so to speak-- but it never occurred to me that it MIGHT be, if that makes sense. Sorry; I probably could have saved you some time there if I'd know that was what you were thinking about.
I've had paws in a REACH copter before-- nicely equipped, very professional staff.
In outlying areas of the PNW, also be aware that EMS may be "volunteer" rather than fulltime professionals. Now, that isn't necessarily a BAD thing. For example, we have a nuclear engineering prof who is a County deputy sheriff here- auxiliary. He's a great guy, and just as well-trained as the paid officers, with nearly identical duties/powers.