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McMurdo Rescue
Plane Carrying 4 Ailing Americans Leaves Antarctica
The Associated Press
W E L L I N G T O N, New Zealand, April 24— A New Zealand air force plane took off safely from an ice runway at a U.S. Antarctic research station Tuesday, carrying out a risky mission to rescue four ailing Americans.
A C130 Hercules left Pegasus airfield at McMurdo Station, just an hour after landing to retrieve four sick staffers and seven other Americans, according to Antarctica New Zealand, a government research group.
"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.
Pole Doc Waits for Rescue Flight
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. The plane was expected to arrive back in Christchurch late Tuesday.
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.
Others among the 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.
Long, Dark Winter
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.
An eight-seat, twin-engine plane fitted with skis for landing gear was scheduled to fly as early as Wednesday from the Rothera research station on the Antarctic peninsula to pick up the 59-year-old doctor. The plane arrived at Rothera last week after a flight from Punta Arenas, Chile, accompanied by a backup aircraft.
Extreme Cold, High Winds
Flights to the South Pole station are normally halted from late February until November because of the extreme winter cold and darkness. But the rescuers worried that Shemenski's condition would worsen in the coming months, when an airlift out of the South Pole would be virtually impossible.
"The wind's blowing like hell. We're getting reduced visibility and blowing snow. If the winds calm down and there's less cloud cover, we'll get better visibility," said Steve Penikett, general manager of Kenn Borek Air Ltd., the Canadian airline company leading the evacuation for the doctor.
Aviation experts say a landing at the South Pole now is especially dangerous with temperatures now 75 degrees below zero — 143 below with the wind chill — and skies are nearly pitch-black some 20 hours of the day.
The rescue effort is the second in two years.
In October 1999, Dr. Jerri Nielsen, the lone physician at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station was evacuated after she discovered a breast tumor that was diagnosed as cancerous. <img height="10" src="http://a160.g.akamaitech.net/7/160/622/20002168951640/abcnews.go.com/images/aquadot.gif" width="10">
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