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Dealing with an unanticipated rise in ambulance arrivals at the USNS Comfort health center ship docked in New york city City — some running dangerously short on oxygen– Militaries on security detail ran hundreds of yards down the pier bring fresh tanks, the Navy stated today.
On a hectic day, the Comfort receives about one ambulance every half hour. However last Tuesday, due to an emergency evacuation of a close-by health center, 10 ambulances raced toward Pier 90 in Lower Manhattan at the exact same time, according to a Navy press release.
The federal government sent the Comfort to New York City at the end of March to help boost regional medical facilities and use relief amid the coronavirus break out that has pushed health care systems to the brink.
U.S. Marine Sgt. Austin Loppe, left, and U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Colton Flach, right, are appointed to II Marine Expeditionary Force as part of a Marine security detachment supporting the USNS Comfort. ( U.S. Navy photo by Ensign James Caliva).
Collaborating traffic and security screening with the NYPD at the entrance to the pier were U.S. Marine Sgt. Austin Loppe and his security team, according to the release.
They came across a patient in one of the ambulances in deteriorating condition and whose oxygen tank was precariously low.
” Even just going a couple minutes without oxygen, the human brain begins losing function and having irreversible mental retardation,” Loppe said. “So that wasn’t something that myself or any of my Militaries wanted to let take place to an American resident.”
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The Marines halted the other ambulances and rushed the critical patient’s arrival, getting the ambulance to the front of the line for emergency care, according to authorities.
Then another client showed up short on oxygen, and as the Marines started focusing on the order in which the clients could board the vessel, they decided that they need to bring oxygen tanks down to their end of the gigantic pier.
So they went to get them, running numerous backyards to select them up– and then bring them back to the clients.
Medical grade oxygen tanks used by the client transport team aboard the USNS Comfor health center ship. ( U.S. Navy picture by Ensign James Caliva).
” They ran down the NYC pier to deliver oxygen– saving a patient’s life,” Sen. Chuck Schumer tweeted in action to the Marines’ actions.
The Marines taking part in the USNS Convenience security team are based in Camp Lejeune, N.C., according to authorities.
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Alan Reyes, a rear admiral in the Navy Reserve and the chief operating officer of the USO, told Fox News earlier this week that he had released aboard the USNS Convenience a years earlier in response to a devastating earthquake in Haiti.
