Miracle on the St. Lawrence The brotherhood of the sea is a tie that binds. by dr . dick with i ngton
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t was a sunny afternoon with a brisk wind out of the southwest. I’d just returned from a clinic at Fort Drum, New York. As deputy EMS coordinator for our county, I monitored the emergency dispatch frequency on the car radio. The initial call was a dispatch for the Alexandria Bay fireboat to manage a medical emergency that occurred on a down-bound “salty” heading for sea. A crewman on the ship was experiencing seizures and required evacuation to a hospital. This occurred before the days of paramedics, cell phones and GPS. The ship was in an area of the American Narrows where stopping, anchoring and even turning were not feasible. Reports from the ship indicated seizure activity continued. An attempt was made to transfer the man to the fireboat, but this was thwarted by an additional seizure. Seas were building, making it difficult to hold the fireboat’s position. With time passing quickly and the likelihood of either the weather or the patient’s situation improving remote, helicopter evacuation was requested.
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Time is of the essence Our nearest U.S. Coast Guard helicopter resource was Station Detroit, with a usual response time of 4 hours; but because the ship was in American (as opposed to Canadian) waters, the call went to a medevac helicopter crew stationed at Fort Drum, located 20 miles from the ship. Here, at Fort Drum, army crews were training for service in Iraq and Afghanistan. They were discouraged from flying over water, partly because they were not equipped with personal floatation devices. Clearly, someone looked the other way and bent a few rules in order to respond to this life-threatening emergency. Reports indicated the victim, a native of Ukraine, was deteriorating. His seizure activity increased. Care was hampered by the fact that medical personnel were not fluent in Russian. Two hours passed. I made a call to the Coast Guard to emphasize the urgency of getting him to a hospital.