KFOR MedEvac team crosses borders to save lives

CAMP BONDSTEEL, Kosovo (June 2, 2022) – When the time period MedEvac is talked about, the considered injured Soldiers being carried by stretcher and loaded onto Black Hawk helicopters is commonly the primary thought to come to thoughts. However, a a lot totally different story lately performed for one Kosovo Force aircrew who was known as out to the rugged panorama of Albania’s northern mountain vary.

It started as a typical, quiet Saturday morning at Camp Bondsteel, Kosovo, for the on-call MedEvac crew of Detachment 2, Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 169th Aviation Regiment, Virginia National Guard. That is till a name got here in notifying them of a possible MedEvac request from an unlikely supply.

“At about 12 o’clock, I got a call from our battalion commander, and he just kind of gave me a heads up and said, ‘hey, you know, be prepared, there might be a MedEvac (request) coming through,’” defined Capt. Christopher Jackson, operations officer with 2nd Bn., 224th Avn. Reg. “I went ahead and called our MedEvac, let them know a MedEvac (request might) come through, that way they can get their crews pulled up and get them ready.”

The initiating incident occurred earlier that morning, on May 28, 2022, when two Albanian State Police officers have been injured when their automobile rolled down a cliff.

Due to the distant location of the incident and the specialised tools obligatory to extract the injured officers, Albanian officers despatched a request for assist to KFOR, who in flip tasked Regional Command East with the very important life-saving mission.

RC-East handed the mission down to the aviation team of Task Force Pegasus, the place coordination for the MedEvac started.

Initial info acquired by Jackson said the incident in Albania included “two Albanian police officers; where one was critically injured and unconscious, (and) another one was noncritical, but also injured,” he mentioned. “They were doing some sort of operation, got in a vehicle accident, rolled down the cliff and were injured. They needed a hoist and a ventilator, which hoist (operations) is something our MedEvac trains with all the time, but never actually done as a real mission.”

Upon receiving notification the request can be coming by way of, the on-call MedEvac team with 1st Bn., 169 Avn. Reg., name signal Samaritan 17, started loading the required tools, growing an motion plan, and began spinning up their UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter.

“You always prepare for what’s going to happen; you play through that in your mind,” mentioned Chief Warrant Officer 4 Brady Lemmon, the team’s pilot in command. “It’s happened before, but this was my first time I’ve ever done that and to be able to execute it at the level that we did, I’m very proud of that.”

When requested what he thought of conducting a MedEvac in Albania, Lemmon mentioned “that it didn’t matter. We had a grid coordinate; we had people to help. It could have been anywhere.”

In addition to Lemmon, Samaritan 17 included Chief Warrant Officer 2 William Von Hemert, pilot; Sgt. Christopher Buchanan, crew chief; Staff Sgt. Nathaniel Moore, medic; and Sgt. Ashley Camper, medic.

Before departing Camp Bondsteel, the Samaritan 17 crew had a very good understanding of what they have been flying into, thanks to the knowledge they acquired from the 9-line MedEvac request. A 9-line is a navy system used to relay details about the placement, severity of accidents, specialised tools wanted, and extra, so MedEvac crews are as ready as attainable when responding to an incident.

However, the knowledge that they had readily available couldn’t put together them for all the things they might encounter once they arrived on the scene.

“We heard (they were) in a gorge, but we didn’t realize that there was going to be 800-meter cliff bases all around us and have to be in such a tight area,” Von Hemert mentioned. “And that’s kind of the nature of MedEvac. We train that when we get on scene, we assess everything from winds, terrain, ingress and egress procedures. But it’s just something in the nature of MedEvac is that you’re never going to know exactly until you get there.”

In order to safely evacuate the injured sufferers, the MedEvac team had to use a hoist system to decrease Moore into the gorge so he might safely consider the sufferers, join them to the hoist, and lift them into the helicopter. Something Moore has educated on extensively.

“Going down I was thinking I want to get down safely and I was very thankful when I did get down and immediately thought to myself, ‘let’s go assess these patients and figure out the best way to get them up,’” Moore mentioned. The precedence was getting “the patient stable to fly, packaged safely and get them (evacuated).”

Due to the space Samaritan 17 had to fly and the quantity of gasoline they might use circling the realm whereas Moore ready the sufferers for evacuation, the crew was not sure in the event that they would wish to evacuate the extra vital affected person first earlier than returning for the second affected person after refueling. Luckily, due to the pace and effectivity of their actions, Samaritan 17 was in a position to safely evacuate each sufferers concurrently and ship them to an Albanian navy hospital collectively.

“When we arrived at the hospital, it was a good handoff,” Camper mentioned. “They were surrounded by the amount of resources they needed to optimize their outcome. With them being able to get a hoist rescue, being able to get critical care in the aircraft, and being able to get right into the hospital’s arms, they had the maximum amount of care they could receive every step of the way, especially for how austere of an environment and the injuries they suffered out there.”

In order to help with the handoff on the hospital, Moore and Camper stayed behind whereas the remainder of Samaritan 17 departed to refuel, making certain a clean transition of the sufferers to the medical employees.

“One of the nice things about medicine is, when you look at all of your damage control, resuscitation, trauma algorithms, they’re pretty universal,” Camper mentioned. “When we arrived at the hospital, it was a good handoff because they were expecting us. When we got there, the doc was there, the nurse staff was there, (and) the trauma bay team was ready to receive. Everyone was certainly ready.”

The mission’s success has been attributed to the coaching and expertise of the Samaritan 17 crew. Additionally, Lemmon mentioned the team dynamic, their communication, and the way properly they work collectively in the end allowed for the secure extraction and evacuation of their sufferers.

“This success was (because) we all work together as a team, we all trained with what we were going to do,” he mentioned. “There were things we trained on that we realized weren’t working out right. We all recognized it and adjusted it on the fly. I don’t know if we could work together any better than we did.”

“I’ve been doing this a long time, I’ve worked with a lot of organizations, and this is probably the best we’ve ever had,” Lemmon added. “This was the best I’ve ever seen. It was really amazing.”

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