Things are completely different in the winter. In winter the temperature is the main issue preventing an LC-130 Herc or a Basler from landing here, but it’s NOT the main, or really any, issue in preventing a Twin Otter, which is what was used in the April 2001 medevac that you originally referenced. The issues there are visibility, wind, and most of all the unpredictability of the weather, both here and at Rothera (whence an Otter would come). Since the plane cannot fly all the way here and NOT land, it’s basically a leap of faith at the halfway point that conditions will remain good enough to land safely here. And it’s an equal leap of faith that they could return to Rothera and land safely there. Weather prediction is not advanced here, mainly due to sparse inputs (there are VERY few stations in the interior to provide observations for modeling).

And as I think I pointed out before, any representation that the weather here in mid-late September and early October was anything but awful is flat out false. Late September brought record-breaking (literally: we broke the all-time wind-speed record) winds and early October was full of thick low clouds. If a medevac had been spun up in early September, it’s quite possible that the plane STILL wouldn’t have reached us (while our weather has been nice for the last five days, weather at Rothera has not been so forgiving).

Of *course* she WANTS to be on the first plane out. Who wouldn’t? So, probably, did the guy with appendicitis last year. You can’t always get what you want, and in this case I think that’s probably appropriate. The risks to the aircrews are significant, so the bar for risk to a patient in remaining here needs to be set pretty high, and people with far more information than you or I have decided that this case did not reach that level. We can disagree with their decision, but to claim that they’re not doing it because of money or callous disregard for human life is irresponsible.

I would think after the base Dr says that they don’t know how to deal with a stroke patient that you would want to be on the very first plane out of there. A stroke is a life threatening condition that can occurr again. Drs are not always correct which is why they rely on other opinions and technology….none of which they have down there aparently…Not like she could mosey into medical and ask for an MRI or CT of the brain…

Ninety-six years later, another achievement was reached â?? the South Pole’s first bar fight.
Without releasing names, the National Science Foundation, which runs the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, confirmed that two men had to be evacuated from the base Christmas Day after what one person characterized as a “drunken Christmas punch-up.”
A C-130 Hercules military transport plane had to be dispatched from McMurdo Station, the main U.S. research base far to the north on the Antarctic coast, after one of the men suffered a broken jaw.
“There was an altercation between two people,” National Science Foundation spokesman Peter West told the New Zealand Herald. “There’s no indication of the cause or of the background between the two folks.”
But Britain’s The Guardian reported alcohol had been involved, and its competitor The Telegraph said the fisticuffs were over a woman.
Canada’s National Post said the antagonists were both employees of Raytheon International, the defense contractor that does the construction and maintenance work at the Amundsen-Scott station.
The injured man was flown on to a Christchurch, New Zealand hospital, at a cost of about $85,000. He was discharged Dec. 26 and was said to be recovering locally.
The other man got an early return to the U.S. â?? without his job.

Regardless of your point, it’s all moot now (as it essentially was from the moment the publicity blitz began). The planes are en route, and they’ll get here as soon as the weather (both at Rothera and here) allows.

2002

In April 2002, the South Pole doctor developed a life-threatening illness requiring a mid-winter medical evacuation, a feat which had never been attempted. The temperatures at the South Pole in winter are well below the -40F operational minimum standards set by the U.S. Air Force. Knowing that the South Pole communityâ??s well-being was dependent on having a healthy doctor, Polar developed an unprecedented medical evacuation plan involving a Twin Otter flight path from Canada, through South America and on to the South Pole and back. The temperatures hovered at -90F when the plane touched down at the South Pole to safely evacuate the doctor back to South America and on to his successful recovery in the U.S.

“I see her striding up and down the halls and getting food in the galley, and I know that she is able to produce multiparagraph responses to emails within minutes.”

amazing.

but i can appreciate the point of your argument.

well said concerning the company.

Simply put: a life isn’t in danger. People die down there because help could not come. This woman is not dying, her health is stabilized. There is no point to risking the lives of the crew and medical personnel required to fly in, and that’s working under the assumption that they would be able to fly back out.

Better she stay put for a few weeks than be killed trying to fly out, or be responsible for the death of a crew. This is the Antarctic, flying in is just not easy or simple or, most times, even possible. I’m sure the risks were explained to her, and I’m sure she signed a bunch of waivers and acknowledgments of those risks. And instead of dealing with the facts of a wintering over, they want to risk the lives of pilots and crews to ‘save’ a woman who isn’t dying.

I don’t see the risk being worth it. And mind you, my spouse and my friends go into risky situations all the time. I guess civilians don’t always understand the reality of those risks, or the reality of how assessments are made.

One woman, stable. A crew of seven or eight on a basic flight: pilot, co-pilot, flight engineer, two coms guys, load master, two general aircrew…minimum. Plus a medical team, maybe another two to five people? So the lives of eight+ people, to fly under some of the most hazardous weather conditions on the planet during the worst part of the season…plus the people on the ground who have to go and make sure the runway is clear, and it’s an ice runway so it has to be prepared, which means sending people out into the dark, in subzero weather and blowing snow, to clear it off and light it up and make sure it’s safe to land. And in Antarctica, even when it’s summer and light, leaving the station to get to the runway is dangerous, it’s 20 miles away through ice and snow and crevasses. In the darkness and cold. Where you throw a cup of coffee in the air and it freezes before it hits the ground. In -50 degrees, or colder. And everyone thinks that this is something to just do? That it is always even possible?

I’m sorry that someone is sick, and I’m sorry the family is worried. But I’m glad for the families of the aircrew that their lives also count for something.

You are welcome to provide a guest post on this very blog if you like (when the dust settles and you’ve cleared the coast, at least!)

Sparky99’s comments are a good example of the kind of mush of fact vs “I heard” that permeates this discussion. At the risk of repeating myself, yes, there have been many flights in the past to deliver things. These were, as I said, apparently routine for almost two decades in the 80s and 90s and were cut for budgetary reasons, not because they were even remotely dangerous. There have been two such flights since they were removed from the winter’s routine: one in 1999 for Dr Nielsen’s cancer and one this year, not for a “foot fungal” infection but for an oral infection that had the risk of spreading to the lungs and being, guess what? Life-threatening. When they do the calculus of “airdrop or not?”, I’m sure that money IS the deciding factor; certainly the risk is minimal, while the costs are huge. And there have indeed been flights to “deliver and remove”: exactly two of them, one in 2001 and one in 2003. They were accomplished, again as I said before, by Twin Otter, in circumstances so sketchy that the pilots wish never to repeat them. And in both cases, the time from “let’s do it” to getting it done was measured in weeks, not days, due mostly to weather delays. Sparky further writes, “When Jerri Nielsen discovered breast cancer while she was there it drew immediate attention and she was taken out ASAP.” Again, completely factually incorrect. She discovered the cancer in April or May and did not leave the station until mid-October, when it happened to be warm enough to allow an LC-130 to come in from McMurdo a few weeks earlier than it was originally scheduled.

I will also flatly contradict that “When you go to the South Pole you are told by the company if something happens they will do anything and everything to get you out for more proper and advanced medical treatment.” It is quite the opposite: you sign an NSF-mandated acknowledgement of the extreme remoteness of the location and the effects of that remoteness on access to medical care.

Based on what I’ve heard from old-timers, Eric Lund has is completely correct that prior to the 2001 flight, the prevailing wisdom was that removal was simply not an option, regardless of the circumstance. The 2001 flight broke that “taboo”, but it didn’t change the idea that a calculus of risk to patient (and maybe community) vs risk to air crew(s) would be a linchpin of any decision-making process. Apparently there was a guy here last year who had appendicitis, which had the appendix burst could easily have killed him. The doctor requested a medevac and was denied. Luckily the infection was controlled by medication, but it’s pretty much inarguable that that case was a better candidate for medevac than Renee’s is at this moment.

BTW, Eric Lund is not, however, on the money regarding the ice-breaker. The ice-breaker situation was in flux in July and August this year, but resolved by late August (and there will be an ice-breaker). So he’s got it backwards: the airdrop was approved when the fuel situation was uncertain, but by the time of Renee’s stroke, it was cleared up. Furthermore, any medevac flight would have been an Otter from Canada, flying through the Americas and coming here from Rothera, and as such would not have been drawing on the fuel at McMurdo. The airdrop C-17, however, DID draw on that fuel, to the tune of 17000 gallons, so in fact it’s clear that, just as money wasn’t and isn’t an issue, fuel wasn’t and isn’t an issue.

Again, I am NOT arguing that there shouldn’t have been consideration of a medevac in the immediate aftermath of the stroke. I’m NOT arguing that Raytheon and the NSF have not been in CYA mode for most or all of this episode. I AM arguing that the current effort is pointless and potentially damaging.

As it should be clear from the neutral name and generic email address, I am choosing to hide behind anonymity for my comments. I do this for a variety of reasons, and for the same reasons I’m going to decline to identify my employer. I apologize for that, as certainly we’d all be better served if transparency without repercussion were possible. I will, though, note (again, you can take my word for it or not, or you can read Big Dead Place or wait for Gandolfini to put it on screen to get an outside verification) that pretty much everyone here who works for Raytheon despises them, and is counting the (now mercifully short) days ’til they depart. This is very much not about “backing up” the company, it’s about proper perspective and presentation of fact. In the end, the truth of the winter will assert itself, though I’m sure in even less high-profile locations than your blog!

At least we got Rudy out that on time: http://goo.gl/FftWA