Second Antarctic rescue flight heads for South Pole

ROTHERA, Antarctica (CNN) -- A new rescue flight left an Antarctic base for the South Pole on Tuesday to pick up an ailing American doctor at a research station there, officials said.

The mission to retrieve Dr. Ronald Shemenski from the Amundsen-Scott Station left hours after a New Zealand air force plane retrieved 11 Americans from a different outpost in Antarctica.

Shemenski is the only physician among the 50 people, including researchers and construction workers, at the Amundsen-Scott Station, where the National Science Foundation conducts astronomy and astrophysics research.

Bad weather forced pilots to abandon two earlier attempts to fly to the South Pole.

Shemenski recently developed pancreatitis after one of his gallstones plugged a duct between his pancreas and gall bladder. National Science Foundation spokesman Peter West said Shemenski is being replaced before the condition can recur.

ALSO A risky mercy mission to the bottom of the world    Background: Dr. Shemenski suffers from pancreatitis, a condition that occurs when the pancreas becomes inflamed. The pancreas, a gland located behind the stomach, secretes digestive enzymes that are used in the small intestine to help digest food. It also releases the hormones insulin and glucagon, which are involved in breaking down sugar. Many cases of acute pancreatitis are caused by gallstones. Shemenski was stricken when a gallstone blocked a duct between the pancreas and gall bladder. An estimated 50,000 to 80,000 cases of acute pancreatitis occur in the United States each year. In severe cases, there may be bleeding into the pancreas, with tissue damage or infection. There is also the danger that toxins may enter the bloodstream, damaging vital organs such as the heart and lungs. The condition may be signaled by a gradual or sudden severe pain in the center of the upper abdomen, nausea, vomiting, fever, weight loss or jaundice, a yellowing of the skin. -- Kat Yancey Gilmore

"The issue with Dr. Shemenski has never been his condition day-to-day, minute-to-minute or hour-to-hour," West said. "The reason that we are flying him out of South Pole and replacing him with another physician is that there is a probability, however small, of a relapse in the gallstone condition he had."

Though Shemenski's condition has improved, NSF spokesman Curt Suplee said the doctor has a 30 percent chance of recurrence, which could develop into a life-threatening condition.

Shemenski will be replaced by Dr. Betty Carlisle, a physician with previous experience at Amundsen-Scott. If the exchange cannot be made within two weeks -- before winter closes in -- it will probably have to wait until October.

Flights to the South Pole station are normally halted from late February until November because of the extreme winter cold and darkness.

Aviation experts say a landing at the South Pole now is especially dangerous with temperatures 75 degrees below zero -- 143 below with the wind chill -- and skies are nearly pitch-black some 20 hours of the day.

"The wind's blowing like hell. We're getting reduced visibility and blowing snow. If the winds calm down and there's less cloud cover, we'll get better visibility," said Steve Penikett, general manager of Kenn Borek Air Ltd., the Canadian airline company leading the evacuation for the doctor.

Earlier Tuesday, a Royal New Zealand Air Force cargo plane safely lifted off from an icy, windswept airfield at McMurdo Station, Antarctica, after landing to retrieve four sick staffers and seven other Americans, according to Antarctica New Zealand, a government research group. McMurdo is about 850 miles from the South Pole.

The risky winter trip was undertaken because one of the Americans requires immediate medical attention, said John Sherve, the New Zealand manager for Raytheon Polar Services, their employer.

Some of the others also have medical needs that can't be met at McMurdo, he said.

"Right now, the count is eleven people coming out, for various reasons," Sherve told The Associated Press. "The primary purpose of the mission is emergency medical evacuation of one employee."

He declined to comment on the patients' conditions, but New Zealand air force sources said one man had a serious heart condition that required urgent hospital treatment.

Others among the evacuees had "family emergencies they need to go take care of," Sherve said, describing the mass evacuation as "unprecedented."

The plane was expected to arrive back in Christchurch late Tuesday after it, too, was delayed by bad weather on the Antarctic coast.

All 11 are employees of Raytheon, which provides support services at the McMurdo base.

The rescue effort for Shemenski is the second of its kind in two years.

In October 1999, Dr. Jerri Nielsen, the lone physician at the Amundsen-Scott Station, was evacuated after she discovered a breast tumor that was diagnosed as cancerous.

Bad weather delays risky rescue flight to South Pole
April 22, 2001
South Pole rescue planned for sick doctor
April 13, 2001
Tough air rescue launched for ailing Arctic doctor
October 7, 1999

National Science Foundation
  • Center for Astrophysical Research in Antarctica
Kenn Borek Air Ltd.
Antarctica's Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station
The New South Polar Times

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