http://www.boston.com/dailynews/103/world/Frigid_temperatures_stall_resc:.shtml

Frigid temperatures stall rescue team from reaching South Pole

By Ray Lilley, Associated Press, 4/13/2001 01:27

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) Twenty-four-hour darkness shrouding a runway carved out of ice and temperatures that turn airplane controls sluggish face U.S. aviators heading to the South Pole to try and rescue a sick American doctor.

Dr. Ronald S. Shemenski, 59, the only physician at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica, recently passed a gallstone and has the potentially life-threatening condition known as pancreatitis.

U.S. officials were preparing Friday for a daring mission to land a ski-equipped LC-130 Hercules cargo plane at the bottom of the Earth to pick up the doctor. Temperatures remained far too low to try such a rescue, but are expected to climb next week. If they do, the mission could go forward.

This is the second time in recent years that the South Pole station's lone physician has developed a serious illness. In October 1999, Dr. Jerri Nielsen was successfully evacuated after she discovered a breast tumor that was diagnosed as cancerous.

Col. Richard Saburro, one of the men coordinating the current rescue mission, said efforts to evacuate Shemenski would be even more difficult.

''In the Nielsen situation, we were heading ... into summer with temperatures trending upward ... and light conditions improving. We had daylight,'' Saburro told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Christchurch, on the eastern coast of New Zealand.

''Things are just reversed today. We know we are heading into winter. The sun has already set. ... There isn't much light at the South Pole. So that adds considerable additional challenges and risks that we need to account for.''

Three ski-equipped Hercules planes left Glenville, N.Y. on Thursday. They were expected arrive in Christchurch late Saturday or early Sunday after making stops in California, Hawaii and Pago Pago to refuel and pick up additional crew.

The Amundsen-Scott base is a scattering of low buildings half-buried in the drifting snow. The largest looks like a partially buried golf ball lodged in the polar ice.

About 50 U.S. scientists work at the base during the polar winter carrying out experiments involving astrophysics and astronomy, with a range of sophisticated telescopes set up there. Similar research stations are scattered across Antarctica staffed by researchers from nations including Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

Saburro heads Deepfreeze, which supplies American scientists working at Antarctic research stations.

If he gives the medivac mission the green light, one of the planes will have to battle through the unrelenting darkness of polar winter and icy temperatures that turn aviation fuel to syrup and thicken hydraulic fluid so that critical components such as wing flaps perform sluggishly.

Another Hercules would wait at McMurdo station on the edge of Antarctica prepared to fly to the pole if anything goes wrong.

A second option, depending on Shemenski's condition, would be to airdrop medical supplies to him.

Temperatures rose slightly at the pole Friday to a maximum of minus 81 degrees still far too cold for the planes from the 109th Airlift Wing based at Glenville's Stratton Air National Guard Base.

Saburro said temperatures must rise to between minus 58 and minus 76 before the operation can go ahead.

Although the National Science Foundation, an independent government agency that coordinates U.S. scientific research in Antarctica, says Shemenski's condition is improving, authorities may well opt to evacuate him now in case he deteriorates in coming weeks when temperatures will plunge too far for an evacuation and stay that way until October.

Shemenski is an employee of Raytheon Polar Services Corp. of Englewood, Colo. The company operates under a contract with the NSF's Antarctic operation.

Surgery for Shemenski, a normal course of treatment, would be ''ill advised'' at the South Pole so agency officials are considering other options including a midwinter rescue by ski-equipped aircraft.

On the Net:

National Science Foundation: http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/media/01/fslogistics.htm

-- Anonymous, April 13, 2001