‘For us, for Belgium, it was very emotional’
Military hospital treated 97 patients suffering from burns, shrapnel damage
BRUSSELS— There has been only one other time in Dr. Serge Jennes’s nearly three-decade-long career when he has seen injuries as devastating as those caused by Tuesday’s terrorist attacks in Belgium.
It was in 2011, in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Jennes was on a 50-day stint treating soldiers injured by improvised explosive devices.
Working at Belgium’s military hospital at Neder-Over-Heembeek as it was hit Tuesday by two distinct waves of casualties, Jennes was taken aback by how similar their wounds were to the soldiers’ injuries.
“These were essentially war injuries,” Jennes said in an interview Wednesday. “Yesterday was really military medicine . . . It was the first time I’ve seen blast injuries like this on civilians.”
Jenner, an anesthesiologist, the head of the military hospital’s burn unit and himself a colonel, worked alongside every doctor and nurse the hospital could call in Tuesday morning, as a total of 97 patients arrived at their doors. Some were in dire need of help.
Their injuries ranged from serious burns to shrapnel injuries caused by metal fragments that created holes in the skin, to an entire nail or screw lodged inside someone’s chest. Patients ranged in age from 6 to 65. Many were young.
Jennes said he had no problem setting his emotions aside, moving quickly to assess patients, treat them in the hospital, or, if they didn’t need the military hospital’s specialized burn unit, sending them to nearby hospitals. The hospital now has 17 people in its burn unit, five in critical condition, one of whom is about 10 years old.
But Jennes doesn’t deny that it was difficult to keep his composure. Just two days before, his son had taken a flight and walked through the same airport baggage area blasted in Tuesday’s attack.
“We set aside our emotions, but it’s not easy. We had so many patients,” he said, standing in a now-empty triage room, where more than two dozen hospital beds were lined up behind him. “For us, for Belgium, it was very emotional,”
Elsewhere in the military hospital on Wednesday, located just five minutes from the Zaventem airport, families in a hellish waiting game gathered to receive psychological help while they hope for answers. They are the relatives who still do not know their loved one’s fate. Ine Van Wymersch, a spokeswoman for the Brussels prosecution office, would not confirm the number of people who are still missing, and likely dead, since Tuesday’s attacks. But multiple families are waiting to find out whether a relative has perished.
Forensic investigators are probing the crime scenes, and will confirm deaths through DNA — and only when they are “100-per-cent sure,” Van Wymersch said.
This process could take hours, days or longer, Van Wymersch stressed Wednesday.