Houlton Rotary receives LifeFlight presentation

    Guest speaker at Oct. 22 Houlton Rotary meeting was Melissa Arndt from LifeFlight. Arndt of Rockland has been the marketing and educational outreach manager for LifeFlight for five years. In this position, she directs all public relations and communications efforts, develops and designs the organization’s publications and coordinates the clinical and aviation safety outreach.
    Before LifeFlight, Arndt worked in Presque Isle as a graphic designer at Northeast Publishing and as the marketing coordinator for TAMC. She also served as the cultural programming chair on the organizing committee for the 2006 Biathlon Junior World Championships.
Contributed photograph
VISITS — Houlton Rotarian Lori Weston is pictured with guest speaker Melissa Arndt of LifeFlight and Houlton Rotarian Ryan Bushey.
    Originally from Presque Isle, she and her family left the area in 2006 to work in Wisconsin, but they quickly realized the error of their ways. In 2007, Arndt was offered the position with LifeFlight and the family happily returned to the great state of Maine, albeit a little farther south than their hometown. When she’s not meeting with patients and writing stories, Arndt and her family are usually on a river or in the woods.
     In 2011 LifeFlight served 136 Maine towns with a total of 1,451 transports. Services that LifeFlight offer are: critical care transport, human patient simulator, aviation infrastructure, landing zone development, and clinical education. LifeFlight services are only used at the request of emergency medical services providers or physicians. Ninety-two percent of services are used in area with populations less than 10,000. Last year, Houlton used 36 air flights and four ground. LifeFlight makes a transport every six hours.
    For more information on this organization visit their website at www.lifeflightmaine.org.