Transporting Children to Safety After Volcanic Eruption.

The Fuego volcano eruption near Guatemala City, Guatemala, on June 3, 2018, left more than 150 dead and hundreds more injured or missing. Local officials quickly identified a need for burn care among the injured and asked the international community for assistance. By the morning of June 4, members of the U.S. Army's Burn Flight Team were placed on high alert in preparation for an evacuation mission to bring injured Guatemalans to the United States for specialized burn care. The mission required seven RNs, three respiratory therapists, a burn surgeon, two intensivists, an anesthesiologist, and an operations officer in order to successfully evacuate six critically injured pediatric burn patients to the Shriners Hospitals for Children-Galveston in Galveston, Texas. This article describes details of each stage of the mission and includes a discussion of key aspects of logistics and patient care posed by such evacuations.