Protesters gathered near Seattle Children’s hospital on Saturday to call for all pediatric emergency helicopters to be allowed to land directly at the hospital.
The protest is the latest ripple in the ongoing saga surrounding the hospital, the Laurelhurst Community Council and the city. The outrage had been sparked about a week earlier when a series of social media posts went viral, calling out a decades-old policy that only allows critically ill or injured” children to be helicoptered to the hospital.
In 2025, it meant 73 out of 222 airlifts landed at the Graves Field helipad about a mile to the southwest, where an ambulance then took the patient to the hospital — a transfer that delays care for sick and injured children…