New Hampshire engineer stuck in South Pole: 'Come in and fly me out'

Tech. Sgt. Kevin Call waits to marshal an LC-130 Hercules from its parking spot on the annual sea ice runway near McMurdo Station, Antarctica. LC-130s are equipped with skis and wheels so they can land on Antarctica's sea ice runways. 

New Hampshire - A Seabrook researcher working at the South Pole may finally get the medical evacuation flight she has been requesting since late August.

Renee-Nicole Douceur works for Raytheon Polar Services as the winter site manager at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, which is operated by the National Science Foundation. She told the Herald via e-mail Tuesday from the South Pole that a flight could arrive as early as Saturday (Friday in Portsmouth). The flight out would be the first leg of a journey to New Zealand, where she said she would finally get full treatment and a proper diagnosis for stroke-like symptoms, including losing half her vision, on Aug. 27.

Since then, she has been in a fight with Raytheon and the National Science Foundation, which have a different medical opinion from the diagnosis made by a Texas hospital. The hospital recommended a special medical flight in and out of the most remote and inhospitable part of the world — during the winter season, when temperatures can reach 100 degrees below zero Fahrenheit and Antarctica is shrouded in darkness.

"For the record, I've always said I know the risks involved in flying a rescue mission and would not want the air crew to risk their lives just for me," she wrote. "However, when precedent was set in April 2001 at minus 92 Fahrenheit in the pitch black then again in September 2003, then I ask why aren't they pre-positioning resources ahead of time such that when a weather window opens (which it has) then come in and fly me out." Douceur was referring to two earlier emergency evacuation flights that carried out a critically ill researcher and the station doctor who had pancreatitis.

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