Spring Break
New Zealand plane takes off on Antarctic rescue mission
Associated Press
A C130 Hercules left Pegasus airfield at McMurdo Station, just an hour after landing to retrieve four sick staffers and seven other Americans, a spokeswoman for Antarctica New Zealand said.
“Right now, the count is eleven people coming out, for various reasons,” John Sherve, the New Zealand manager for their employer, U.S.-based Raytheon Polar Services, told The Associated Press. “The primary purpose of the mission is emergency medical evacuation of one employee.”
He declined to comment on the patients' conditions, but New Zealand air force sources said one man had a serious heart condition that required urgent hospital treatment.
The McMurdo airlift came hours after blowing snow, high winds and low visibility prevented another emergency airlift from taking off for the South Pole, where a sick American doctor is waiting for a flight out for urgent treatment.
The plane at McMurdo spent just one hour on the ground to pick up the evacuees and refuel. Its engines were kept running throughout the stopover to prevent them freezing in the minus 22 temperatures, after the 8-hour flight from Christchurch, southern New Zealand.
With little cloud and no wind, weather conditions were near ideal for the rescue mission. Bad weather conditions on the Antarctic coast had earlier delayed the rescue mission 24 hours.
Other evacuees had “family emergencies they need to go take care of,” Sherve said, describing the mass evacuation as “unprecedented.”
“Several of the evacuees will need medical treatment,” he said. A medical staff of five, including an anesthetist, was on the evacuation mission.
All eleven are employees of Raytheon, which provides support services at the McMurdo Base, 800 miles from the South Pole.
There are 211 Americans left at the base following the evacuation, where they will winter over until the next flights, scheduled in late August as Antarctica's spring begins. The evacuation flight carried fresh fruit and vegetables and personal mail to the ice-and-snow bound base staff.
In the separate rescue effort, Ronald S. Shemenski, at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole station, is the only physician among 50 researchers working there. He recently suffered a gall bladder attack and has been diagnosed with the potentially life-threatening condition known as pancreatitis.
