Airmen Pitch In To Save UN Blast Victims

Airmen from several Air Force units at Baghdad International Airport rescued seven U.N. employees injured when a terrorist bomb exploded outside their headquarters August 19.

Approximately 90 minutes after the attack, 301st Expeditionary Rescue Squadron officials sent two combat search and rescue teams. Each team included one pilot and three pararescuemen. They were joined moments later by another team.

“PJs (pararescuemen) bring more capability to an accident scene than most people are aware of,” said one of the team leaders. “We’re fully certified trauma paramedics who can perform minor field surgeries, amputations, tracheotomies and (deep intravenous drips for burn patients).”

They can also operate rescue equipment like the “jaws of life” and rope pulleys. These skills were put to use the night of Aug. 19 because other rescuers did not know how to use some of the equipment.

The team’s first job was to set up and use a rope pulley to retrieve a bombing victim. The victim was trapped in the rubble about 15 feet below the closest access point.

“This guy was in bad shape,” said another pararescueman. “He’d been pinned upside down for more than two hours. Both his legs were crushed, his right hand was pretty much destroyed, and he’d lost about 40 percent of his blood as well.”

It took about 40 minutes to retrieve and fly him to the coalition hospital, where he underwent the four-hour surgery that saved him.

“This is where training really pays off,” said Col. Brian Morr, 447th Expeditionary Medical Support commander. His team includes 31 medical professionals from 10 bases. “As medical personnel, we follow the same training plan worldwide, which makes us an effective team despite having never worked together before.”

Four of the seven patients were released within 24 hours. Three others were flown to medical facilities outside Iraq.

Fortunately, the Air Force had the needed medical care.

“Our mobile field surgical team, embedded in EMEDS, has the capability to perform emergency surgery to stabilize patients with life-threatening injuries,” said Lt. Col. (Dr.) Craig Ruder, 477th EMEDS orthopedic surgeon. “We treated his crush injuries, controlled ongoing bleeding and provided fluid resuscitation that stabilized his condition.”

Eleven hours after the first rescue team responded, the final leg of the medical marathon began at the 379th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron. The squadron’s mobile aeromedical staging facility prepared the remaining injured trio for aeromedical evacuation. Facility flight nurses and medical technicians cared for the patients.

“The (staging facility) is basically a hub for all the area’s medical evacuations,” said Lt. Col. Andy Wolkstein, the facility’s commander. “We take patients from the surrounding camps and prepare them for transport. (Aug. 19), we already had 61 patients scheduled for transportation to Germany; so we added that first critical patient and a critical care air transport team at the last minute.”

During the 1991 Gulf War, military leaders learned they needed a way to move critically injured patients quickly to better-equipped medical facilities, Morr said. So, they developed the transport teams.

While the capability has been a theory for a while, it became a reality during operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, said Master Sgt. Mike Jones, a respiratory therapist assigned to the team.

“We used to only be able to transport stable patients,” said Jones. “Now we’re able to transport patients who have been stabilized and are under intensive care. That’s a major difference.”

The three-person teams include a critical-care physician, critical-care nurse and respiratory therapist. The teams set up an intensive-care unit on the airplane. Each team can care for up to three critical patients those who require ventilators or up to six who do not.

This multinational, joint-service team made sure the patients brought to the airport were safely airlifted to more advanced care outside Iraq.

“This was a total-team effort,” said Morr. “Our team consisted of physicians from the Air Force and Navy; Air Force nurses; and Air Force, Navy and Australian forces technicians.”

FMI: www.af.mil