Plane Lands At South Pole In A Nail-Biting Effort To Rescue Sick Worker

Washington DC: After flying through dangerous dark and cold, a rescue plane landed on Tuesday at the South Pole to evacuate a sick worker from a remote USA science station, federal officials said.

The plane arrived at the South Pole after a daring 1,500-mile, nine-hour trip from a British base on the Antarctic peninsula, according to the National Science Foundation which runs the polar outpost.

The plane’s crew — a pilot, co-pilot, flight engineer and medical worker — will rest and wait for at least 10 hours. Then if weather conditions are favorable, the plane will refuel and return to Rothera, said agency spokesman Peter West. After that the sick worker will be taken out of Antarctica for treatment “It went all according to plan,” West said from Arlington, Va.

A second worker is also ill, but officials have yet to decide whether that patient will also fly out, West said. The science foundation will not identify the workers, who are employees of Lockheed Martin which handles logistics at the station, nor their medical conditions.

There have been three emergency evacuations from the Amundsen-Scott station since 1999. Workers at the South Pole station are isolated from February through October, the coldest and darkest months when it’s too risky for routine flights.

The latest mission is pushing the limits of what is acceptable, said Tim Stockings, operations director at the British Antartic survey in London.

The National Science Foundation decided last week to mount the rescue operation because one staffer needed medical care that can’t be provided there. The station has a doctor, a physician’s assistant and is connected to doctors in the USA for consults, west said. There are 48 people — 39 men and nine women— at the station.

The temperatures at South Pole on Tuesday afternoon was -75 degree fahrenheit (-60 degree celcius), with a wind chill that makes it feel like -108 degrees (-78 Celsius) according to the science foundation’s weather station and webcam.

The extreme cold affects a lot of things on planes, including fuel, which needs to be warmed before takeoff, batteries and hydraulics, West said. The Twin Otter can fly in temperatures as low as -103 degrees (-75 degrees Celsius), he said.

The 1999 flight, which was done in Antarctic spring with slightly better conditions, rescued the station’s doctor, Jerri Nielsen, who had breast cancer and had been treating herself. Rescues were done in 2001 and 2003, both for gallbladder problems.

Scientists have had a station at the South Pole since 1956. It does astronomy, physics and environmental science with telescopes, seismographs and instruments that monitor the atmosphere. The foundation runs two other science stations in Antarctica.