Jayhawk helicopters

Jayhawk helicopters were among the most important—and, at first, repeatedly misdirected—rescue aircraft at Memorial Medical Center during Hurricane Katrina. Their arrival offered a way to evacuate patients stranded by flooding and the collapse of the hospital’s power system, but the helipad became a point of confusion: crews were sent in, told that no patients needed rescue, and diverted away even as critically ill people remained inside. When the helicopters returned, their crews and hospital staff had to coordinate difficult extractions under darkness, severe time constraints, and dwindling fuel.

Rescue Aircraft at a Failing Hospital

Memorial’s vulnerability had been recognized before the storm. Plant operations director Eric Yancovich had studied flood elevations and warned that water could disable essential parts of the emergency power system, even though the generators themselves sat higher. After the generators failed, LifeCare patients who depended on ventilators faced evacuation without reliable electrical power; some had to be manually ventilated while being moved. The Jayhawks therefore served not simply as transport but as a scarce link between intensive care inside the hospital and functioning medical facilities elsewhere.

The aircraft operated amid a larger evacuation effort. Private medical air ambulances had already flown sixteen critically ill babies, most of the critically ill adult patients, and a stabbing victim—twenty-five patients in all—before fog made flying difficult. But the private flight coordinator did not expect to return on Wednesday, and other hospitals still awaited help. The Jayhawks’ missions thus depended on rapidly changing rescue priorities, available flight time, and accurate information from people on the ground.

The First Nighttime Arrival and Its Reversal

At about eleven on Tuesday night, a Coast Guard Jayhawk descended toward Memorial. The Acadian Ambulance flight coordinator thought he had signaled it, but the crew had actually been redirected by a C-130 relaying rescue requests from the ground. The helicopter’s mission was to begin evacuating all remaining patients. Instead, someone on the helipad told the crew that no patients needed to leave and that the aircraft should return after daylight. The crew relayed that message, received permission to fly to Tulane Hospital, and took the coordinator along with roughly a thousand pounds of medical equipment collected from private helicopters. The Jayhawk lifted away without a patient aboard.

That departure mattered because patients were still waiting at Memorial. The hospital had reduced its census from 187 to about 130, but all fifty-two LifeCare patients remained on the seventh floor, including seven who relied on ventilators. At the Coast Guard’s emergency command center, Shelley Decker learned that at least three helicopters had been waved away. She urged colleagues to send them back and worked through a chain of cell-phone calls, air-station communications, and radio contact with the C-130 to coordinate another attempt. A report that a ventilator patient had died while waiting sharpened the urgency.

The Jayhawk that had flown to Tulane was diverted back to Memorial. Its crew had spent the intervening hours rescuing people from flooded rooftops and leaving them at a highway interchange west of New Orleans, where thousands of people were stranded without buses. On returning to Memorial, the pilots maneuvered onto the helipad at night, using a slight tailwind to position the aircraft. Again they were told that there were no critical patients to evacuate, while staff and non-patients were anxious to leave. Conflicting radio reports, however, confirmed that patients were still awaiting rescue.

Difficult Extractions Before Dawn

Incident commander Susan Mulderick went to the helipad to determine what was happening. She found crowds of non-patients, including families and community members sheltered at the hospital, gathered in the enclosed walkway and stairwell. A Coast Guard flight mechanic warned that the civilians would be taken to an improvised field at the highway interchange, not to a prepared shelter, and urged them to remain where they had food and water. At the same time, workers carried a patient up the helipad’s metal steps in near-darkness. Mulderick judged the transfer dangerous for untrained staff and told the crew to take the patient but not to return again.

The patient had required a Code Blue resuscitation on the way to the helipad and was being manually ventilated. She needed direct transport to a hospital in Baton Rouge, but the Jayhawk had spent so long at Memorial that it was approaching its fuel limit; the crew was also nearing its permitted flight time. A doctor threatened to leave the patient unattended on the helipad if she could not board. The team arranged a relay: the Jayhawk would fly her and a LifeCare nurse to the Coast Guard New Orleans air station, where another aircraft could take them onward. They left Memorial at 5:15 a.m. Inside the shaking helicopter, the accompanying nurse appeared too frightened to act, and the rescue swimmer and a freelance cameraman helped care for the patient. The transfer was completed.

A Second Crew and the Ventilator Patients

Mulderick’s decision to stop the airlift had not reached every crew. A fresh Jayhawk, launched from a Coast Guard air-training station in Mobile at 3:30 a.m., had received a call for help. Its crew was willing to attempt the rescue, including the possibility of carrying two ventilator patients at once. The helicopter held position above Memorial while a rescue swimmer descended to the helipad, where hospital personnel crowded around him. The LifeCare patients were ready, but their equipment and fragility made the standard litter used for rooftop rescues unsafe.

The crew arranged a light landing: the pilot approached while the flight mechanic watched the helicopter’s clearance, and the rescue swimmer helped make room on board by moving troop seats. Staff rushed two patients to the aircraft. The swimmer also unloaded bottled water and ready-to-eat meals for hospital employees, along with a portable Coast Guard radio that a doctor could use on emergency channel sixteen. The helicopter then headed directly to a hospital in Lafayette, more than an hour away. The swimmer monitored and manually ventilated the patients throughout the flight. Meanwhile, additional LifeCare patients were being brought downstairs and passed through an opening in the machine-room wall toward the helipad, showing that the successful departure of two patients had not ended the evacuation effort.

The Jayhawks’ record at Memorial was therefore marked by both rescue and delay. A helicopter initially arrived with orders to evacuate patients but left empty after being told none remained; only renewed coordination brought it back. Subsequent crews carried a resuscitated patient and two ventilator-dependent patients out, while the operation’s narrow margins—night flying, a hazardous helipad, limited fuel, and the patients’ dependence on continuous care—shaped every transfer. Their flights made visible how much rescue depended not only on aircraft, but also on communication that could accurately connect those waiting inside the hospital with those arriving overhead.