New Fort Bragg program provides quicker care for injured soldiers

Womack Army Medical Center used to depend on Life Flights from Duke Hospital and UNC Hospital to get injured soldiers to hospitals in the Triangle in a timely manner, but now the trips are made by Medevac Teams from the 82nd Airborne Division.

“The only capability that exists that can provide that is our UH-60 Blackhawks that are here in our Garrison on Simmons Army Airfield,” said Lieutenant Colonel Sean Fortson, chief of emergency medicine.

“The second things is that we needed an ability to maintain training and sustain that training for our medevac crews and our critical care nurses that are embedded with those crews when they deploy.”

The service is provided not only for soldiers, but their families as well. The trip from Womack to Duke or Chapel Hill by ambulance on the ground takes about an hour and a half.

“It also takes an ambulance out of our commission for up to three hours when conducting it by ground mission,” Fortson said.

The 82nd Medivac Team makes about 30 to 45 trips a month, and Fortson said the program is saving lives.

“It’s a tremendous for both the community, and it’s a tremendous sustainment platform for our aviation colleagues and our critical care nurses,” he said.