The most difficult part seemingly behind them, a rescue team that bucked the deep freeze of the polar winter to evacuate a sick American doctor from the South Pole is now looking to make a last jaunt across the Drake Passage to safety.
With two days of dangerous flying complete, the crew of a small propeller plane are one long step away from pulling off a daring of a 59–year–old doctor sick from a recent gall bladder attack.
The Twin Otter plane carrying Dr Ronald Shemenski completed the first leg of the flight from the South Pole, landing safely at the British–run Rothera base on Antarctica’s Adelaide Island.
The eight–seater plane touched down on a well–lit, gravel runway more than eight hours after leaving blackened skies and subzero temperatures at the Amundsen–Scott research station on the South Pole.
The last leg: a six–hour journey to Punta Arenas, Chile, where Shemenski is expected to board a commercial flight to the United States, where he will immediately undergo medical treatment.
Rescue officials said Shemenski was in stable condition and walking under his own power. “Leaving the pole, he was pretty good,” said Tom Yelvington, general manager at Raytheon Polar Services, a US–based company heading up the rescue effort.
The flight was an especially dangerous leg of the riskiest rescue ever at the South Pole, with the pilots of the plane braving snow, cold of minus 65 Fahrenheit (minus 54 Celsius), high winds and pitch–black polar darkness.
The crew and Shemenski were resting at Rothera, a research station located across the Drake Passage from Chile.
Raytheon spokeswoman Valerie Carroll said the crew would aim for an early Thursday afternoon departure.
Yesterday, the plane carrying Shemenski landed at 8:53pm EDT (0053 GMT Thursday) from the Pole, completing a 1,346–mile journey at a time in the winter season when flights to Antarctica are normally halted.
The extreme cold and darkness that generally characterize weather at the South Pole from late February until November make flights risky.
“I’m thrilled that he’s safe and that the crew is safe,” said Shemenski’s wife, Rebecca, who maintains a home in Fremont, Ohio. “They still have a long way to go. We should all continue to keep them in our thoughts and prayers.”
The doctor recently suffered a gall bladder ailment and has been diagnosed with inflammation of the pancreas, a potentially life–threatening ailment that can occur when a gallstone passes down the bile duct.
Rescuers decided to risk the evacuation because of fears that Shemenski’s health could deteriorate after worse weather makes the South Pole unreachable. Shemenski was the sole physician among 50 researchers working at the pole.
On Tuesday, the Twin Otter propeller plane flew through the darkness to the South Pole, landing on a runway – a 2,000–foot strip of ice – lit up by the glow of burning debris in barrels.
Lying in the cramped plane packed with fuel and supplies were two pilots, an engineer and Dr. Betty Carlisle, Shemenski’s replacement. Heaters blowing hot air kept the plane warm overnight.
Shemenski’s was the second dramatic rescue attempt in 24 hours. On Tuesday, a plane successfully evacuated 11 American staffers from McMurdo Antarctic Base on the Antarctic coast across from New Zealand.
The effort to evacuate Shemenski came almost two years after a female doctor was airlifted from the South Pole station. Dr Jerri Nielsen was evacuated in October 1999 after she discovered a breast tumor that was diagnosed as cancerous.
But Shemenski’s airlift is by far the riskiest, said Peter West, a spokesman for the National Science Foundation in Washington.
West said Nielsen was taken out only two weeks before the polar summer, when conditions were turning less severe. “Then it was getting warmer and lighter as they were moving into summer,” he said.
Antarctica has progressively been getting darker since last month, when the winter–long night began at the pole. By now, most of the continent is in utter darkness and will remain so until October.
