Disaster Relief from a King Air’s Point of View
The call from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) came in late August following Hurricane Harvey, a Category 4 storm that came ashore near Rockport, Texas. Harvey then stalled and moved back toward the Gulf, dumping extraordinary amounts of rain across southeastern Texas and Louisiana.
Air ambulance teams from across the country were called on, via the FEMA mobilization order, to move both fixed-wing and rotor equipment, supplies and staffing to southeast Texas. FEMA had requested two aircraft from North Carolina-based MedCenter Air, each with isolette capability for neonatal patients. The aircraft with those capabilities would be MedCenter’s Beechcraft King Air B200 (N209CM), as well as a Cessna Citation Ultra. Each aircraft would be staffed by two pilots and medical crew for day and night shifts which totaled 16 people. Also accompanying the two requested aircraft was the organization’s other King Air B200 (N207CM) to transport additional equipment and crew.
The base of operations for this humanitarian effort would be the airfield in Temple, Texas, which was located far enough from the disaster zone not to be a burden on the immediate disaster area, but close enough to the facilities and patients the aircraft were sent to support. Arriving at the FEMA-managed fleet ramp, the massive hangar was busy with other arriving aircraft, equipment, medical crews and pilots. The first line of business was filling out government paperwork to get the aircraft and crews registered with FEMA. After N207CM unloaded some of the crew and equipment, it headed back to MedCenter’s home base. The other two aircraft were parked in preparation for their duty to start the next day. The crews were divided into 12-hour day/night shifts for each aircraft and they all went to check into the hotel to get rest before their shifts started.
FEMA had quite a job working out the logistics of matching the evacuation needs of the hospitals and care facilities with which air ambulance would fit the mission for each of those flights. Over the next week, N209CM would engage in flying medical evacuation missions and personnel transports, combined with light cargo carrying. The crisis in Beaumont, Texas, eventually took top priority as the city was flooded with water, but had no clean water to drink, which required the mass evacuation of all patients from hospitals in that area.
Operations from the FEMA base in Temple were described by MedCenter Air’s Pilot Chris Frishmuth as “impressive, as dozens of aircraft from around the country were assembled and dispatched from the airfield.” Aircraft were usually pushed in waves from Temple to Beaumont, where they would wait – sometimes a few minutes, other times, hours – for patients to be evacuated. The medical crews had to be flexible and adapt as oftentimes they had little or no idea of what type of patient, and their medical needs, would be showing up at the aircraft. Assessments were made on the fly, but handled “with their typical professional calm,” described Frishmuth. The overall state at Beaumont was described as “organized chaos” with fixed-wing airplanes, dozens of helicopters, including military aircraft of all types running around the airspace on a multitude of missions. ATC and communications were generally very good in Texas, unlike what this team would face later in Puerto Rico.
During the Harvey deployment, there was a unique challenge for the MedCenter Air crews – the odd shift schedules that were required. Day pilots were assigned a shift from 2 p.m. to 2 a.m., while the night shift was on duty from 2 a.m. to 2 p.m. So there was really no true day or night shift since a good bit of time was spent during both, and finding rest during the off times was a bit of a challenge. During each shift, the crews working were required to be at the airfield, resting on cots in the hangars and finding ways to pass the time until their aircraft got called up for a mission. During shift change, the previous crew would get those coming on call caught up on operational notes and discuss the events that happened during the shift.
MedCenter Air’s maintenance team supported the aircraft from afar as the aircraft flew many hours on its humanitarian missions. There was 100 percent reliability and dispatch rate for the aircraft. After a week in Temple, the air ambulance teams were deactivated by FEMA and the medical crew, pilots and aircraft returned to MedCenter Air’s home base of Charlotte … and would do it all over again a few weeks later in Puerto Rico.
Thank you to pilot Chris Frishmuth for allowing us to pull information from his blog and use his photos for this article.
About Med Center Air
MedCenter Air is based out of Charlotte, North Carolina, and provides emergency and critical care patient transport services for the Carolinas HealthCare System with a fleet of fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters and ambulances. The fixed-wing aircraft are operated by Sterling Aviation, LLC, a Texas-based company that manages several medical transport aircraft.
MedCenter Air offers national and international transport through four fixed-wing aircraft – two Beechcraft King Air B200s and two Cessna Citations. The aircraft are equipped with advanced medical equipment including cardiac monitors, ventilators, multiple IV infusion pumps, advanced drug therapies and an intra-aortic balloon pump.
Medical staff and pilots are available 24 hours a day for emergencies and scheduled patient transports. Pilots are provided by Sterling Aviation, LLC and two pilots are scheduled for every flight for safety. Pilots are highly experienced and are required to have an FAA Airline Transport Pilot (ATP) Certificate, more than 2,000 hours of previous flight time, an FAA first-class annual flight physical and attend annual recurrent training, including flight simulation. The highly qualified medical crew must also meet rigorous requirements for their field.
The aircraft are also used for organ transplant transfers and transportation.
Leave a Reply