Emergency flight evacuates sick US worker from Antarctic base
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) - A U.S. Air Force medical evacuation plane took off from an ice runway at McMurdo Station on the Antarctic coast Saturday carrying a seriously ill worker to a hospital for treatment, officials said.
The Air Force C-141 Starlifter jet, based at March Air Reserve Base in Riverside, California, left the U.S. research station early Saturday afternoon and was expected to arrive in the southern New Zealand city of Christchurch by early evening, station manager Bill Coughran said.
The name of the worker and the nature of the illness were not disclosed for privacy reasons.
Dan Mathers, manager of New Zealand's nearby Scott Base, said in a telephone interview that the plane flew out in clear conditions for the return leg of its 7,680-kilometer (4,800-mile) round trip.
The Washington, D.C.-based National Science Foundation, which runs McMurdo, said that while there is a doctor at the base, which houses 191 people, it would be safest to take the patient to New Zealand and then the United States for treatment.
Temperatures in the coastal area of the frozen continent were at a daytime high of minus 25 degrees Celsius (-13 F) as the plane departed.
Flights to the station normally end in mid-February and don't resume again until October, after the Southern Hemisphere winter, which casts the continent into near-permanent darkness and sends temperatures plunging.
However, several emergency evacuations have been undertaken in recent years. - AP
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