CDC-designed HEPA filters to the sky.
Back in 2011, when the ABCS prototype was
completed, the plastic sock had been taken to Ab-
erdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland, where gov-
ernment testers vibrated it on shake tables and
brought it to 20 degrees Fahrenheit below zero.
Phoenix Air itself had loaded it on a test aircraft
with pilots wearing oxygen masks. They flew the
system up to 45,000 feet and dumped the cabin’s
air, as though a window had broken, then dived
down to safety at 15,000 feet. The government had
declared the ABCS safe and effective, but by then
the SARS epidemic was over. Ten plastic kits sat
unused in boxes in the back of a hangar, and Dent
had mentioned them to the Department of State as
almost an afterthought. (“Dent’s the best business
development guy in the world,” Walters says of his
targeted storytelling.)
In 2014, Dent returned from his vacation imme-
diately and collected his medical staff, among them
a mountain-biking emergency physician named Mi-
chael Flueckiger, who had worked at Atlanta’s Pied-
mont Hospital for 24 years and helmed the ER for
two, and a genteel-accented registered nurse named
Vance Ferebee, who, by 2007, had spent 22 years fly-
ing rescue in helicopters. Two days later, in a hangar
break room complete with a kitchenette and several
vending machines, they were joined by some 15 doc-
tors and scientists from the CDC, the U.S. Depart-
ment of Health & Human Services, the military, the
National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. Depart-
ment of State.
The officials sat at round cafeteria-style tables, as
if it were lunchtime in junior high. Someone had the
president on the phone. They decided Brantly and
Writebol’s fate as a show of hands, and it was unani-
mous. Ebola is a fairly weak virus: It cannot move
from person to person through the air like SARS can.
It transmits only through bodily fluids. The ABCS
was overkill. They would try it.
Ferebee and two other medical officers boarded a
flight to retrieve Brantly two days later. They flew to
Liberia and loaded the sick doctor exactly according
to plan. And then everything went nuts.
Both Brantly’s destination hospital at Emory Uni-
versity and the ambulances that would transport him
there had previously practiced what would happen if
Phoenix Air landed with a highly infectious patient.
They just hadn’t counted on it being Ebola, a virus
uniquely capable of scaring the hell out of everyone.
The nonmedical staff at Phoenix Air revolted first.
Emory hospital had to have a sit-down hash-out in
an auditorium. The national news waxed hysterical,
with television stations camping out in Cartersville
in their trucks with their broadcast antennas. One of
Phoenix Air’s medical directors was forbidden to at-
tend sporting events at his kids’ high school. Flueck-
iger had to lie to clinics when they asked if he’d been
to any of the Ebola-stricken countries, to avoid get-
ting quarantined.
Above that, the international politics were immense.
All Dent could think was that there was no way this situ-
ation ended well. What if insurance companies asked
them to ferry only certain people back? What if France
asked Phoenix Air to bring back one doctor and the
U.K. asked them to bring back another doctor and they
had to choose? They had one plane. They were a private
company. What the hell were they doing?
Dent asked the public affairs officer at the CDC
what to do about the media, which led to a press con-
ference at which reporters were allowed to see the
equipment and ask any questions they wanted. Then,
once Phoenix Air had completed a turnaround trip to
deliver Nancy Writebol, William Walters drew up a
contract that made Phoenix Air an official provider
for the U.S. Department of State, which would make
all the life-and-death decisions itself. Walters wanted
to do this anyway—Phoenix Air was the only compa-
ny in the world equipped to transport extremely in-
fectious patients. BP, ExxonMobil, and the Chinese
government, all of which had extensive infrastruc-
ture in Africa, were circling in an effort to nail them
down for themselves.
In the end, Phoenix Air flew about 40 people who
had, or who had been exposed to, Ebola from West Af-LATER, LAROCHELLE
WOULD HEAR THAT
YOU’RE CONSIDERED
A HIGH-RISK EXPO-
SURE IN THE UNITED
STATES IF YOU
TOUCH AN EBOLA
PATIENT WITHIN
THE LAST 24 HOURS
OF LIFE. HE HAD
TREATED THIS WOMAN
WITHIN HER LAST
FOUR.A training
exercise using
the CBCS.88 July/August 2019 _ PopularMechanics.com