Upstate, Fort Drum conduct medical-transport training exercise

SYRACUSE — Upstate University Hospital and the U.S. Army’s Fort Drum near Watertown today conducted a medical-transport training exercise on the roof of the Syracuse medical facility.

The event included a Black Hawk helicopter from Fort Drum landing on the structure’s helipad.

The exercise sought to ensure that both Upstate and Fort Drum are “familiar and very comfortable working together” in the event they have to save someone’s life, Captain William Keller, executive officer for the medevac unit at Fort Drum, said while speaking with reporters on Upstate’s helipad.

“Fort Drum is beginning a range medevac mission in that we’re going to be covering soldiers out on the range that are out doing training. We do train very hard and it’s vital that is responsible for evacuating our soldiers is not only prepared to pick them up but to come here to Upstate as well and drop them off,” Keller said.

The training involved getting the pilot familiarized with flying from the range environment at Fort Drum to Upstate and then moving the patient from the helicopter and the facility’s roof into the hands of the medical professionals at Upstate, Keller said.

Besides Upstate, Fort Drum is also beginning similar relationships with Samaritan Medical Center in Watertown and a medical facility serving Burlington, Vt., he added.

“This is an important exercise, especially for Upstate, in that it highlights and strengthens our ability to work closely with Fort Drum,” Jerry Morrison, a registered nurse and Upstate’s trauma-outreach coordinator, said in an Upstate news release.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com