One Surgeon's Story - Banda Aceh
BY ROB ATKINSON


used for patching holes in cars as the bonding agent for the external fixatur. This was never tried but was a brilliant idea. I also managed to get a skin graft mesher from the Royal North Shore Hospital, on pain of death if it did not come back. Numerous companies donated equipment, all of which was arriving and being catalogued.

On the Friday afternoon we were informed by the Disaster Management Service in New South Wales, which had carriage at this stage, that a lot of equipment had been packed and we did not have to worry. After 48 hours of developing our own equipment we were a little nonplussed to hear that this seemed like we were doubling up. We in fact then planned to configure both sets of equipment according to the identified need.

At that point we were advised that due to low casualty rates we were no longer needed and could go back to Adelaide. Frank Bridgewater and I went back to Adelaide, although some stayed on for the fireworks in Sydney. Later information indicated that it was wall to wall people and not a lot of fun. Within 48 hours it was recognised there was a significant casualty load and thus we were reactivated.

The team was expanded to include Plastic Surgeons x 2, namely Peter Riddell and Mark Moore, with even more resources including water and food etc which we had planned for. We got away on the Thursday morning 5 January, this time on a chartered Virgin 737, with the initial plan of flying direct to Medan or Banda Aceh.

Thus began the magical mystery tour, which went to Darwin then ostensibly to Medan but turned back to Batam, which turns out to be quite a big city with an international airport in Indonesia just across the straight from Singapore. After much too-ing and fro-ing we spent the night at the Novotel Hotel there and interestingly enough, during walks done by members of the team through the market etc, we found the people were enormously appreciative of the fact we were going to help in Aceh.

After take-off we approached Medan and then were diverted to Kuala Lumpur. We were not able to land there so we had quite a raffle about where to go next, which I won because Penang was our destination. At that stage we had eaten the plane clean and I must say that the crew of this Virgin aircraft were absolutely superb in difficult circumstances. We left them at Penang and after a considerable wait were bused across to Butterworth where we bunked down in the transport area and then loaded a C130 which flew in the early hours, after only a few hours sleep, direct to Banda Aceh. After landing there, vehicles were acquired from US Aid which had a transport pool enabling us to cart our equipment to the Fakina Hospital in Banda. In fact Dr Roger Capps hit the ground running and was involved in a caesarean section as he arrived. We felt this was a good opportunity to avoid all the lifting and carrying that had to be done.

We had enough Piccadilly water, 10 litres per person per day for fourteen days. We carted this upstairs and Dave Mack our logistician suggested that the strength of the floor might not be enough to cope if there was an earthquake. My view was, just ride the water down as it would be a good cushion. Nonetheless, we carted it all down again. Gradually we got configured with our equipment, food and water. The living conditions at this small private hospital were quite...

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One Surgeon's Story
- Bandah Aceh

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