Heroic Travis Air Base Airman saved lives in California

Reserve Citizen Airman’s quick action saves lives

Air Force Reserve Command
By Staff Sgt. Daniel Phelps
349th Air Mobility Wing Public Affairs
Published March 05, 2019

Staff Sgt. Emily Johnson, 349th Aeromedical Staging Squadron admin assistant, poses for a photo at Travis Air Force Base, Calif., on March 4, 2019. In January, Johnson helped save lives in a multiple car crash on Interstate 80 near Fairfield, Calif. during rush hour. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Daniel Phelps)

TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif.
It was just another day for Staff Sgt. Emily Johnson, 349th Aeromedical Staging Squadron administrative assistant. She had finished up work at Travis Air Force Base, California, assisting members of the 349th Air Mobility Wing with travel voucher issues. After a change of clothes, she was on her way to class in Vallejo, where she was taking classes to fulfill her dream of becoming a doctor.

As she drove down I-80 during its treacherous rush hour, the truck in front of her changed lanes revealing a 65-mile-per-hour collision course with a stopped car.

“The vehicle just casually merged over,” she said. “So, I didn’t think anything of it. Then all of a sudden, there was a stalled car in front of me. I slammed on my breaks, going 65. I had maybe 30 feet to stop.”

Johnson sat there for a moment in the carpool lane to process as cars zoomed around her.

“I sat there in my car and looked behind me,” she said. “I kept thinking, ‘I’m going to get hit, I’m going to get hit.’ I couldn’t stay there. I needed to get over.”

She quickly cut around the car, parked about 20 feet in front of it, and turned on her hazard lights. Once settled, she called 911 and told dispatch there was going to be an accident on the highway. Johnson then rushed to the driver in the stalled car, an elderly woman.

“I told her, ‘Get out of your car, get out of your car. You’re going to get hit. You’re not going to live,” Johnson described.

The Reserve Citizen Airman escorted the driver to her car and placed her in the passenger seat. As Johnson was about to leave the highway to get to a safe location, a crash was heard as two cars plowed into the back of the stalled car.

“As soon as I heard the hit, I told the woman to stay in my car,” Johnson described. “I jumped out of my car and ran back to check on the other drivers.”

And then a truck came. The two drivers who had hit the stalled car had gotten out of their cars to inspect the damage. When the truck came, it didn’t merge into the other lane where traffic was, it went towards the divide.

“I don’t think he had time to stop,” Johnson said.

The truck hit the two cars and struck the drivers who were out inspecting the damage.

“Literally, this all happened in less than a minute,” Johnson said. “I heard the initial crash, and by the time I got out to check, the truck had hit. Immediately, I started looking for people.”

She rushed to the first car, the air bag had gone off, the door was open, and there was no one to be seen. She went to the next one and the door was bent back the opposite way, and still no one.

“I thought, ‘Where are these people?’” she said.

She looked on the other side of the concrete divider, where oncoming traffic was, and there was a man standing in the middle of the highway. His pants were tattered and he was bleeding from his legs and face. He said he flew over the barrier when the truck hit him.

“My first thought was, ‘How are you alive? How are you conscious? How have you not been hit by another car?” Johnson said.
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Travis Air Force Base Psychologist accused of rape

UPDATE
Travis AFB Psychologist Accused of Sexually Assaulting Vets Pleads Not Guilty
NBC Los Angeles May 26, 2018

Heath Sommer is accused of raping and sexually assaulting at least three patients, including Air Force veterans suffering from PTSD and who had already survived sexual assaults. "This man is a monster," Iraq War veteran Kelly Shufeldt-Rodriguez said about Sommer.

CBS
May 15, 2018

In a statement released by Travis Air Force Base, spokesperson Traci Keller confirmed that the U.S. Air force had contracted Sommer to work at the base's David Grant Medical Center, but said he was "no longer employed there."

A psychologist contracted to help trauma victims at Travis Air Force Base in California left his patients "even more traumatized" by his own alleged sexual attacks, prosecutors say. CBS Sacramento reported Monday that Dr. Heath Sommer was arrested earlier in May and entered not guilty pleas to multiple felony sexual assault and battery charges.

On Monday, prosecutors filed their official complaint against the clinical psychologist, detailing allegations that he used a technique known as exposure therapy on his patients -- inflicting the same sort of abuse on his patients that would have landed some of them in his office in the first place.

CBS Sacramento says the alleged abuse occurred between 2010 and 2016, and that Sommer faces charges including sexual battery, rape, and oral copulation. It was not clear how many alleged victims there were, or how many of them were already victims of sexual abuse before they sought treatment at the Air Force base.
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Veteran sues after flag folding at Travis Air Force Base

Air Force veteran sues after being thrown out of flag-folding ceremony
Air Force Times
By: Stephen Losey
4 hours ago

Oscar Rodriguez, the retired senior master sergeant whose ejection during a flag-folding ceremony at Travis Air Force Base in California sparked a nationwide uproar, is suing the Air Force for alleged civil rights violations.

In April 2016, Rodriguez was thrown out of a retirement ceremony for his friend Master Sgt. Charles Roberson when he stood — at Roberson’s request — to deliver an unauthorized speech during a flag-folding ceremony that mentioned God.

Roberson is also a plaintiff to the lawsuit, which was filed on their behalf by the religious freedom organization First Liberty Institute. Rodriguez is alleging violations of his rights under the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments of the Constitution.

The IG said that Rodriguez had been told multiple times that he could not deliver his speech because the ceremony was an official on-base retirement, and his speech was not the one spelled out in Air Force regulations. He was told he could attend the ceremony quietly as a guest but not as a participant.

Oscar Rodriguez, the retired senior master sergeant whose ejection during a flag-folding ceremony at Travis Air Force Base in California sparked a nationwide uproar, is suing the Air Force for alleged civil rights violations.
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Driver dead: crashed Travis Air Force Base Gate

Driver dead after breaching gate at Travis Air Force Base
Air Force Times
By: Stephen Losey
March 22, 2018

Three C-17 Globemaster IIIs sit on the tarmac at Travis Air Force Base, Calif. A driver who breached the main gate at Travis and then crashed was pronounced dead at the scene Wednesday evening.

(Louis Briscese/Air Force)

A driver who breached the main gate at Travis Air Force Base in California and then crashed was pronounced dead at the scene Wednesday evening.

Travis officials said in a release posted online that there were no additional fatalities or injuries, and there are no current threats to the base or the community. The investigation is ongoing.

The base said that its first responders, including security forces, and emergency officials from nearby Fairfield responded after the driver “gained unauthorized access” to the main gate shortly before 7 p.m. The car crashed shortly afterward, Travis said.
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Travis Airman Rushed to Help Rider After Motorcycle Crash

Travis AFB Airman treats motorcycle crash victim
By T.C. Perkins
60th Air Mobility Wing Public Affairs
Published January 09, 2017

TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AFNS) -- Just nine days before Christmas, Airman 1st Class Richard Crawford, a 60th Communications Squadron cyber security journeyman, decided to take a break from the holiday hustle and bustle to go fishing in Northern California.

Little did he know that by the end of the day, he would be instrumental in possibly saving the life of an injured motorist on U.S. Highway 50.

“I was heading back from a fishing trip when a motorcyclist passed me, lane splitting,” Crawford said. “He got a few cars ahead of me and eventually out of my line of sight; soon after, I heard a collision.”

The collision Crawford heard was a car slamming into the motorcycle at about 50 mph sending the rider skidding across the highway.

Crawford exited his vehicle and noticed the man holding his left leg. He also saw blood dripping from the man’s left foot.

Using skills he learned in self-aid and buddy care training, -- a course that teaches Airmen how to prevent the loss of life, limb or eyesight and treat battlefield casualties -- Crawford tended to the man’s injuries.
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Military medical mistake changes Arlington Airman

I found this looking at another story. I can't believe no major news source picked this up.

Military medical mistake changes Arlington Airman
July 17, 2009
Jessica Read is still stunned about what happened to her husband. "It's hard for us to understand"




http://cbs11tv.com/video?id=44394@ktvt.dayport.com


Travis Air Force Base was supposed to operate on a gallbladder, but ended up cutting the aortic valve of this Airman. Because of the FERES Doctrine, his legs were amputated over blood loss but no one can be sued. Airman Colten Read is left without legs.

Aboard U.S. flying hospital

Aboard U.S. flying hospital

An injured Marine lies on a litter in the cargo area of the C-17 Globemaster carrying him and other combat wounded to a military hospital in Germany for treatment. Photo by Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle

Aboard U.S. flying hospita

lAir crews from Travis Air Force Base fly missions on the average of once a week, to bring the casualties and combat wounded back from Afghanistan or Iraq to Germany, and then to hospitals back home in the U.S. Duration: 5:57. Camera and Editing: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, Chronicle Staff

click post title for link to the video and great pictures of these medics saving lives.

Feres Doctrine is Doctrine of Death

Active military barred from malpractice suits
1950 ruling protects service hospitals, regardless of error
By Walter F. Roche Jr.
April 20, 2008


Minutes after routine surgery for acute appendicitis in October 2003, Staff Sgt. Dean Witt, 25, was being moved to a recovery room at a Northern California military hospital when he gasped and stopped breathing.

A student nurse assisting an understaffed anesthesia team tried to resuscitate Witt and failed. Inexplicably, Witt's gurney was wheeled into a pediatric area. Lifesaving devices sized for children, not a 175-pound adult, proved useless, according to an internal report on the incident.

Medical personnel at David Grant Medical Center at Travis Air Force Base screamed at each other. A double dose of a powerful stimulant was mistakenly administered. When a breathing tube was inserted, it was misdirected, uselessly pumping air into Witt's stomach. Errors compounded errors, and delays multiplied.



By the time a breathing tube was finally inserted correctly, Witt had suffered devastating brain damage. Three months later, he was removed from life support and died. Witt left behind a wife and two young children.

"This medical incident was due to an avoidable error," concluded a previously unpublished internal report, a copy of which was reviewed by the Los Angeles Times.

Despite the report's harsh criticism of Witt's medical care, the bereaved family could not sue for malpractice because Witt was an active-duty airman. Under limits stemming from an obscure Supreme Court ruling nearly 60 years old, military hospitals and their staffs are immune from malpractice claims if the victim is an enlisted man or woman on active duty.

A series of court rulings since 1950 have upheld the original decision, known as Feres v. United States, which denies members of the military the right to sue for damages over medical errors or even deliberate wrongs.

Feres defenders say the doctrine is necessary to protect the military from costly, time-consuming trials that could compromise military discipline. Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Republican from California, member of the House Armed Services Committee and a former fighter pilot, called Feres "a reasonable approach to ensuring that litigation does not interfere with the objectives and readiness of our nation's military."

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