Wilford Hall Airmen aid Hurricane Ike evacuees

  • Published
  • By Linda Frost
  • 59th Medical Wing Public Affairs
LACKLAND AIR FORCE BASE, Texas (AFPN) --  Approximately 100 medics from Lackland Air Force Base worked around the clock Sept. 12 through 14 to assist with Hurricane Ike evacuees from the Gulf Coast region who arrived at Port San Antonio.

Wilford Hall Medical Center members assigned to the 59th Medical Wing staff helped move 137 special-needs patients from aircraft at Kelly Field, Texas, and loaded them onto transport vehicles for shelter destinations throughout San Antonio.

Teams continue to remain on standby to move patients if needed and provide medical support to the state, said Maj. Rashon Gilbert- Steele, the 59th Medical Control Center team chief.

"Our teams have been on standby around the clock since Sept. 8. Several teams were activated, and we continue to remain ready to respond if needed," Major Gilbert-Steele said.

Supporting teams from the 59th Medical Wing included personnel from manpower, medical control center, facilities management, patient administration, medical logistics, casualty management and immediate medical response, and a war reserve material team. The nutritional medicine team provided food and water for manpower.

Officials from the 37th Medical Group also provided personnel including manpower, patient movement, ambulance bus teams, patient reception, aeromedical evacuation liaison teams, and a hurricane evacuation team. 

A critical care team transported an infant from the Driscoll Children's Hospital in Corpus Christi to Wilford Hall Medical Center Sept. 9. Alannah Miranda Garcia, was on a heart-lung bypass machine, called ECMO, which stands for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. In anticipation of having to evacuate patients, the Corpus Christi hospital contacted the Air Force to move the critically ill infant.
The baby is now on ECMO in the Wilford Hall neonatal intensive care unit.

"We were very pleased with the tremendous cooperation with the civilian authorities for the ground transport of this baby," said Lt. Col. (Dr) Daniel Dirnberger, the attending ECMO physician. "County police and state troopers provided escort services the entire route from Corpus Christi all the way to San Antonio. It allowed for a much smoother transition and our mission was accomplished in six hours, to include the transfer of ECMO equipment and stabilizing the infant."

Five critical care air transport teams, or CCATTs, and two CCAT extender teams returned to Lackland AFB from the air evacuation hub Sept. 15 at Little Rock AFB, Ark. The CCATT teams moved 30 patients, the majority from the Corpus Christi area to civilian hospitals in Dallas.

CCATTs are three-member medical teams, comprised of a critical care doctor, critical care nurse and respiratory therapist, a CCAT extender team is comprised of two critical care nurses who are trained and equipped to transport critically ill patients in aircraft.

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