 |
| A
passenger terminal in the Louis Armstrong New Orleans
International Airport is used to stage elderly patients
for evacuation. More than 2,000 patients have been
moved since operations began. (U.S. Air Force photo
by Master Sgt Jack Braden) |
By Staff
Sgt. C. Todd Lopez
Air Force Print News
LOUIS ARMSTRONG NEW ORLEANS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT,
La. -- Usually, this airport is pretty sterile.
With waxed floors and fresh air, everybody moves through
quickly and nobody plans on staying long.
That was before Hurricane Katrina. Now, instead of businessmen
and vacationers, a different kind of traveler packs the
airport -- evacuees trying to catch a plane out. Among
them are many people who are sick or injured during the
hurricane.
But a total force team of Airmen are helping get the sick
and injured out of the airport at a steady clip of about
1,500 every 24 hours.
“I have made two trips to Iraq,” said Lt. Col. (Dr.) Wayne
Olsen of the 433rd Air Evacuation Squadron at Lackland
Air Force Base, Texas. “The mass casualties here are worse
than I’ve ever seen. Worse than Iraq.
“I don’t know how many people are here, but for every
100 people I move, another 200 show up,” he said.
To keep up with the numbers, an Air Force medical rapid
response force is operating a 25-bed hospital with emergency
and surgical capabilities. There is also a mental health
team and a dental team operating at the airport.
Plus, there is a 60-person mobile aeromedical staging
facility from Wilford Hall Medical Center at Lackland
set up in an airport concourse and providing support and
medical care to patients awaiting evacuation. This is
the last stop for patients -- many on stretchers -- before
they board a plane, Dr. Olsen said.
“We’re staging patients and taking them out of this concourse
to the C-130 (Hercules),” he said.
Capt. Edward Greer, a flight nurse, said a team of medics
provides patients last-minute care. They tend to their
needs, provide fluids and keep them company.
“We provide medical intervention and stabilization,” Olsen
said. “And we have been moving large loads of people.”
Then specialists from several civilian agencies move patients
to the aircraft.
Patients come from multiple areas outside the airport.
The people arrive by bus and ambulance and go through
a triage procedure before being sent to the staging facility.
Then they get a flight to a hospital.
“And there are lines and lines of helicopters coming in,”
to help fly them out, Dr. Olsen said.
Just outside one of the terminals, in a place where most
common people never get to venture, there are more helicopters
lined up than most people will ever see in a lifetime.
Some are from Air Force Special Operations Command, and
there are many Navy and Army helicopters. Also on the
busy tarmac are Air Force, Navy and Coast Guard aircraft
and civilian helicopters.
They line up after having been to New Orleans. Each helicopter
brings patients plucked from a staging area inside the
city. As soon as they unload them -- families, nursing
home patients, children and even a dog or two -- they
leap into the air and head back to perhaps the worst natural
disaster area the United States has seen.
The helicopters have been rotating in and out of the city
nonstop since Aug. 30, and they will not stop until the
relief operation is over.
“Once they get off the helicopter, they are triaged,”
Olsen said. “That is happening downstairs in the baggage
claim area.”
Olsen said sometimes there are about 500 people in the
triage area at one time.
The worst of the patients make their way through triage
and into the staging facility, in preparation for departure
via airplane to any number of hospitals in the United
States.
Most of the patients are from nursing homes and hospitals
and are in dire straits.
“We are clearing out the nursing homes,” the doctor said.
“Those patients are extremely ill. Many haven’t had water
or food. Some are on dialysis and haven’t had treatment
for days. We are seeing the results of that.”
One of the friendly Airmen some patients see before their
medevac flight is that of flight nurse Maj. Stacia Belyeu.
On Aug. 30, Belyeu, of the 452nd Air Medical Evacuation
Squadron at March Air Reserve Base, Calif., got her call
to duty.
“I saw it on the news and wondered if we’d get a call,
and we did. And I was ready,” she said.
The major has family and friends in New Orleans, and she
lived there for three years. So the job is more personal.
“What happened to the people of New Orleans, I think,
is horrendous and sad,” she said. “I still know people
who live here, but they were able to leave.”
Belyeu will take some of the elderly and infirm on stretchers
out of New Orleans. It will be a relatively short flight,
to Ellington Field, Texas, which is near Houston. Hundreds
of evacuees are already there.
“This is what I’ve trained to do, and this is what I like
to do,” said the major, a reservist who is a nurse in
civilian life. “For me, the flight nurse is a different
kind of nurse and it is something I really cherish and
enjoy doing.”
She will get many chances to do her job before the Air
Force ends its support to the region.
