Aviation experts hired by a group of Streeterville residents spent last night raising questions about the safety of a proposed heliport at the new Children’s Memorial Hospital campus, and called on the Illinois Department of Transportation to reject the hospital’s plan.

The Streeterville Organization of Active Residents produced a doctor, a wind expert and a career pilot to dissect the hospital's safety studies.

Each of the organizations's experts conluded none of the hospital studies showed helicopter operations would be safe. But they also took pains to say they supported the mission of the hospital and its plans to relocate to the area from Lincoln Park.

Last night’s testimony came during the second of four hearings the Illinois Department of Transportation is holding on the proposed heliport at the new hospital near the Magnificent Mile. IDOT must ultimately decide whether or not to approve the heliport.

On Wednesday night, Children’s produced its experts, who said the heliport would be far safer than others like it. Children’s also said a heliport near Navy Pier wouldn’t work because it would take too long to transport patients from there to the hospital, endangering them.

“Neighborhood concerns related to the safety of a rooftop helipad need to be properly addressed,” Alderman Brendan Reilly (D-42) said at the beginning of last night’s hearing.

One expert after another last night said there wasn’t enough information to say whether the helipad would be safe.

“The first thing that hit me when I went through this extensive amount of material was that there was no safety analysis done,” said Patrick Veillette, a flight instructor and corporate pilot.

But Mary Kate Daly, a spokeswoman for Children’s, said after the hearing that the studies the hospital paid for paint a comprehensive picture. And she noted that Children’s went above and beyond what was required, conducting additional studies in response to concerns SOAR raised 18 months ago.

“It is these collective studies that have helped us plan a safe heliport,” Daly said.

Not so, says Veillette, who was brought on by SOAR.

He pointed to the historical wind data Children’s produced to show that a third of the time or more, helicopters approaching from the east or the south could run into dangerous conditions that would make the aircraft act like a weathervane and try to point into the wind.

“These loss of control problems do not give a lot of warning to the pilot,” Veillette said.

The wind tunnel studies Children’s commissioned were deeply flawed, said University of Notre Dame professor Thomas Corke, an aerodynamics engineer.

In a series of technical slides, he indicated that the company doing the wind tunnel tests didn’t test enough different wind conditions and made assumptions about the winds that would only apply in less dense areas with far fewer buildings.

“The wind tunnel study was not adequately performed and not adequately analyzed,” Corke said.

Daly, the hospital spokeswoman, disputed that. She said the series of wind studies Children’s commissioned were the most comprehensive ever done for a heliport.

“We wanted to be a good neighbor so we spent money, we spent time, we did the extra studies,” she said.

Dr. Bryan Bledsoe, a doctor in Las Vegas with experience in emergency medicine, disputed Children’s argument that lives would be endangered if a helicopter had to land near Navy Pier instead of on the helicopter’s roof – a viable substitute, Reilly said.

Several scientific studies show there is no additional risk, Dr. Bledsoe said.

“I don’t see any medical reason to not use the alternate site over on the lake,” he said.

Though Children’s produced a 14-page heliport procedures manual, something that SOAR had been asking to see for months, but that alone isn’t enough to assuage the concerns of many residents.

“If this were approved, the institution should go far, far above and beyond, using every available technology, to make sure it’s as safe as possible,” Reilly says.