Just another day at work for the pilots and crews.
As Gordy rightly says....when it comes to situations like these....get stuck in and do it as safely as you can.....the goal is for everyone to go home for their Supper that night.
I would have dropped my Observer to handle the loading of the passengers and would have agreed upon how many I would take....then put a skid onto the roof top as high on the roof as possible to maintain plenty of blade clearance as possible.
Swinging the folks over to the next building makes a lot of sense as suggested....and if I had the resources I would have done a double lift of passengers using a crewman or other Rescue person at the receiving end. Thus doubling up on my haul rate.
But job well done by all!