When a late-night June 18 boating collision left a teenager missing in the darkness of Lake Lanier, Georgia State Patrol’s aviation team turned on the “night sun.”

The state agency’s helicopter was the first to arrive on the scene of the crash near the mouth of Shoal Creek in the lake’s southern end.

The incident may have been the first publicized benefit of having one of six posts of the Georgia State Patrol’s aviation division locate in Gainesville.

And, following the Gainesville City Council’s decision to lease the airport hangar to the state Tuesday for a five-year term, it likely won’t be the last.

Before responders arrived that June night, the 15 people involved in the crash spent several minutes blanketed in darkness as they looked for the missing boy using a local fisherman’s spotlight.

“There was still a lot of confusion as to exactly what was going on; the 911 center was getting very vague information as far as details,” said Trooper First Class Ryan Holloway, who piloted the state helicopter out of Gainesville’s Lee Gilmer Memorial Airport to the scene that night.

His teammate, Tactical Flight Officer Steve Mickels, immediately started using a Forward Looking Infrared camera, searching the water surface for 13-year-old Griffin Prince’s body heat with a device located on the front of the helicopter.

He also activated a search device appropriately nicknamed “the night sun,” flooding the water surface below them with light.

Hall County Fire Chief David Kimbrell remembers the light as a sort of beacon for emergency crews who were on the way to the scene by boat.

Traveling on the lake always carries certain risks for emergency responders, darkness being one of the more treacherous dangers.

The state patrol searchlight, he said, also “was a huge asset,” as search crews looked for the teen throughout the night.

“They enabled us to find (the scene) much quicker,” Kimbrell said.

And it offered assurance to search crews who suspended their search later in the night that none of the victims were left waiting on the surface of the lake.

“That’s a huge thing,” Kimbrell said.

Because of the logistics of responding to emergencies on the lake, crews’ arrival times to such scenes is usually much longer than emergencies on land.

But from the airport, Holloway remembers arriving on the scene approximately 15 minutes after receiving a call for assistance.

Crew of 4 mans chopper

Staffed by two pilots — the commander, Sgt. Kevin Thompson, and Holloway — and two tactical flight officers — Mickels, who comes to the post via a partnership with the Hall County Sheriff’s Office, and Trooper First Class Jay Shirah — the hangar houses a key resource for local law enforcement and emergency management agencies in a 24-county area of Northeast Georgia.

The pilots and tactical flight officers joke about whose job is more important while on aerial missions. But in the end, each admits that the mission wouldn’t work without the other.

“Most of our search-and-rescue flights, without them being involved, there’s really no need for us to even go,” pilot Holloway said.

“We can’t do the job without each other,” said Mickels, the tactical flight officer who works with Holloway. “The bottom line is that they can go out and fly, but they can’t perform the mission, and obviously we can’t perform the mission without these guys.”

In large part, the troopers based from the hangar assist local agencies with searches for missing people or fugitives.

They are also used to transport dignitaries in the area and to search for marijuana growers.

And, with the help of an attachable 210-gallon water tank, the hangar’s Bell 407 helicopter can assist local agencies with fire suppression and rescue missions in which the patient is not easily accessible to land-based agencies, including in some of the more treacherous tourist destinations as Tallulah Gorge and Amicalola Falls.

Gainesville Fire Chief Jon Canada sees a future benefit in help the state aviation division could provide fighting local brush fires.

“There’s a lot of options, a lot of benefits to them being here locally,” Canada said.

More central location

Before relocating to Gainesville’s airport, the crew operated out of a hangar in Athens. They moved to Gainesville earlier this year, which they say positions them more centrally in their territory.

Before the move, a flight to assist a search or emergency in Rabun County, at the far end of the state, would take some 45 minutes. Now, it takes no more than 25 minutes to reach the same destination, Thompson said.

The post was relocated in Gainesville a few months ago, and as state and local officials have been working out the technicalities of a permanent lease agreement, the pilots and tactical flight officers have been working in temporary digs.

In the next week, city-hired crews will begin work on an expanded office space for the state agency. City Council has approved spending some $134,800 from the airport budget to renovate 1,700 square feet of office space in the hangar, tailoring it for the aviation division’s operations, including climate-controlled storage space for sensitive equipment.

Currently, the office consists of a table Thompson brought from home, two chairs Holloway donated, a phone line, a printer and two Georgia State Patrol laptops.

Thompson, motioning toward a stack of three-ring binders, jokes that the binders serve as his current “filing cabinet.”

“We’re operating with the bare essentials at this point,” Thompson said.