Ho-Chunk doctor flew through a hurricane
Warner receives medal for life-saving mission
It was late on a holiday weekend when Capt. James D. Warner received a phone call from his skipper, who told him to prepare a medical team for an emergency deployment to the Bahamas the next morning.
“‘Not sure what to expect, but be prepared for the worst,’ was his opening line,” Warner, a flight surgeon for the U.S. Coast Guard, said he was told by his executive officer. Hurricane Dorian, a Category 5 storm with sustained winds of 185 mph, was bearing down on the island nation in the Caribbean Sea about 180 miles from Miami in the late summer of 2019. Bahamian officials were requesting help to save lives.
Warner, 47, a member of the HoChunk Nation in Wisconsin who is stationed in Clearwater, Florida, told his wife that their Labor Day plans had to be canceled in favor of his “allexpenses paid vacation to the Bahamas, courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard.”
Dorian was still positioned over the Bahamas when he and his team, which included a rescue swimmer, arrived at a Naval clinic on Andros Island the next morning.
“We just started helping people as soon as we could,” said Warner, who was the chief medical officer for the mission.
He immediately got to work establishing a communication network among international medical teams throughout the area and coordinating evacuation plans.
Nighttime was fast approaching when Warner received word that a medical and evacuation team was desperately needed on the Abaco Islands for life-saving operations.
That chain of islands had borne the full brunt of Dorian, but the storm’s wind wall had moved north. That gave Warner’s crew an opportunity to reach the islands and its more than 17,000 inhabitants on the tail end of the hurricane. He recalled smiling at that challenge.
Warner suited up, grabbed his helmet and equipment, gathered his team and boarded an H60 Jayhawk. It was a one-hour “rough ride” to the island as the hurricane’s winds pushed the helicopter to its maximum safety limits.
He was astounded by what he could see in the fading daylight when he arrived, describing that it looked like a
massive bomb had exploded in the area.
“It was devastating,” Warner said. “The whole island was destroyed . ... All we could see flying over was cars piled on top of other cars and trees sheared.”
They landed in several feet of water in the parking lot of the Marsh Harbour Clinic on Great Abaco Island, which was the only building still standing with electricity on the island thanks to its backup generator.
The clinic was filled wall to wall with hundreds of the island’s residents seeking medical attention and refuge.
“The locals were very scared, wet, and without power or food,” Warner said. “You just don’t forget something like that.”
He met with the clinic’s doctor, who was busy treating a patient’s serious leg injury and started to assess the scene.
“I wasn’t sure if he was the calmest person I had ever met or if he was simply sleep-deprived and shocked by his situation, but he spoke with a slow, steady voice as he explained his patient’s prognosis,” Warner later wrote of the experience in the Uniformed Family Physician, a newsletter for medical workers serving in the military.
Warner then triaged patients on the island, prioritizing those whose injuries were most serious, and created a method and schedule for Coast Guard medevacs.
His team evacuated the first five patients by carrying them, wading through the water, back to the helicopter. They flew into the night under hard rain to Princess Margaret Hospital on the island of Nassau, about 90 miles away.
Their illnesses and injuries ranged from an arm amputation, blunt-force trauma, severe lacerations and kidney failure requiring dialysis.
Warner and his team continued medevac operations in the hours and days ahead as he continued to assess and help coordinate the country’s medical services, including transporting other doctors and nurses to where they needed to be.
With many communications lines down, he would sometimes walk miles on foot searching for medical professionals out of contact from communities in need.
His medical humanitarian mission lasted nine days with the support of more than 900 Coast Guard personnel, 32 aircraft and nine Coast Guard ships called cutters.
They answered 1,388 search-andrescue calls and directly saved the lives of 457 people. Warner personally saved seven lives.
Dorian was the strongest hurricane to ever hit the Bahamas on record and its lingering over the country made it the most destructive, according to experts.
The nation’s official report was that more than 70 people were killed, but hundreds of undocumented immigrants were declared missing.
Warner and the Coast Guard are credited for keeping the situation from becoming much worse and helping to save thousands of lives during and immediately after the storm.
This past December, over a year after the rescue mission, Warner was awarded the Meritorious Service Silver Medal, the second-highest form of recognition from the Department of Homeland Security for outstanding leadership and superior public service.
“Captain Warner went to extraordinary lengths and personal risk to establish direct contact with medical providers throughout the Bahamas’ impacted area,” his commanders wrote in their nomination letter. “His decisive actions while leading a small cadre of health service technicians and aircrew in the affected area dramatically amplified the operational impact of our organization, undoubtedly helping to stem a humanitarian disaster.”
Warner didn’t know he had been nominated last summer until after he won the award.
“I was really thankful,” he said. “This is very meaningful. I was speechless in the beginning.”
One day, when he’s had enough of flying into hurricanes, Warner said he would eventually like to return to Wisconsin, where he learned about his tribal roots, so he can lend his expertise to the benefit of the Ho-Chunk Nation.
For now, he’s happy serving with the U.S. Coast Guard.
Frank Vaisvilas is a Report For America corps member based at the Green Bay Press-Gazette covering Native American issues in Wisconsin. He can be reached at 920-228-0437 or fvaisvilas@gannett.com.