Published Saturday, September 23, 2000, in the Miami Herald  

Amid policy debate, doctor acted quickly to treat survivors

BY PAUL BRINKLEY-ROGERS

While high-level officials in Washington debated the fate of eight survivors from a Cuban plane that ditched into the sea, a 30-year-old Navy lieutenant made a command decision -- bring them ashore.

The crash of the Russian-made biplane severely injured a ninth person and drowned a 10th, and Dr. Michael Clark -- a man very much aware of his compassionate calling -- ruled that all eight of the bruised and cut survivors needed to be X-rayed to diagnose any internal injuries.

``The Coast Guard said American policy is wet foot, dry land,'' Clark said, referring to the U.S. practice of allowing only Cubans who touch land to stay. ``But their policy doesn't really affect my policy.

``These people were  in a plane crash,'' said the Macon, Ga., native, who spent 45 minutes on Wednesday tending to the survivors aboard the Panama-flagged freighter that rescued them midday Tuesday 285 miles southwest of Key West in the Yucatan Channel.

``I'd check one person and I'd say this person was injured and looks fine, but what really was the injury? . . . And then, I guess, the human factor took over.'' He told himself, ``These people should be in a hospital. They [Washington] make the policy, then they can work it out.''

Hour after hour on Wednesday, the Lower Florida Keys Medical Center and the U.S. Coast Guard waited for Washington officials to resolve the issue of whether the survivors would be allowed to stay.

Meanwhile, at 1:30 p.m., Clark -- a flight surgeon at Boca Chica Naval Air Station -- was being winched down to the deck of the MV Chios Dream from a Coast Guard Dauphine helicopter. He had his medical kit, including an old-fashioned stethoscope, in his hand.

The freighter's mix of Latino and Greek crew members helped him out of the hoist basket. Clark, who had once been stationed at Souda Bay naval base on the Greek island of Crete, was able to ask in Greek if the food he smelled in the air really was a mix of fish and feta cheese.

It was. But he was much too busy to eat.

ON TO WORK

He found the two women survivors and their three children in a stateroom normally used by crew members and went to work. He checked for infections. He pressed on bruises to test for pain.

``The kids were all fine,'' he said. ``They had some minor abrasions -- little stuff on their tummies. But they were playing.''

Liliana Ponzoa, 36, had a deep cut almost to the bone on her lower left leg.

There was a Kerlix wrap -- a kind of spongelike gauze -- around the injury, placed there the day before by Dr. Myron Binns, the Jamaican-born physician aboard the Carnival Cruise Lines ship Tropicale that had stopped to render aid. Clark said Ponzoa also had cuts and bruises below her left eye near the cheekbone.

Mercedes Martínez Paredes, wife of the plane's pilot, Angel Lenin Iglesias Hernández, had suffered a bruise below her right breast and above the rib that could have indicated a rib fracture.

On another level of the ship was the pilot, another man and a woman.

Clark said the pilot's left arm appeared to have been dislocated. He had no way of telling for sure without X-rays. ``The pilot was in a lot of pain.'' He had a cut above the left eye and bruises on his face.

``He was at the controls,'' Clark said. ``There was apparently only one seat on the plane.'' When the crop-duster plane hit the water at 70 or 80 knots after circling the freighter, Clark said, the pilot was smashed against the control panel. Everyone else was thrown around inside the plane.

Pabel Puig Blanco, 27, whose half-brother, Judel Puig Martinez, 23, drowned in the ditching, had a 5-by-2 1/2-inch bruise on his back below the 12th rib, indicating possible internal injuries.

The woman, teacher Jacqueline Viera, had a collarbone injury, Clark said.

``On her right side there was a good amount of swelling and bruising in the area of the clavicle. I felt around the clavicle and thought it was possible she had a mid-shaft fracture.'' He said she was given Naprosyn, an ibuprofen drug, for the pain by Coast Guard corpsman David Villareal, who earlier had called Key West to suggest sending a doctor.

Clark radioed the Coast Guard.

He said he was aware of ``the worst-case scenario for these people'': deportation.

`NEEDED ATTENTION'

``The policy was in the back of my mind,'' he said. ``But from my perspective, they needed medical attention.

The Chios Dream was only two hours from Key West. It was not worth the risk, he said, to winch the survivors from a ship being buffeted by high seas and a strong wind to a chopper.

``My recommendation was to wait'' until the Chios Dream was close to shore, he said, where the Cubans could be placed on small boats and taken to ambulances.

They were X-rayed. As it turned out, they had not suffered internal injuries. The ninth survivor, Rodolfo Fuentes, remains at a Key West hospital and his condition is improving. He had been airlifted from the freighter the day before Clark's arrival.

``I felt I did the right thing,'' Clark said. ``This is what we work for,'' he said of physicians. ``This is what I trained for. This is what that was all about.''

The interviews by immigration officials that could have sent the survivors back to Cuba would have to wait.

Lt. Cdr. DeAnn Farr, a doctor at the group medical center at Boca Chica, summed up what happened on the freighter.

``The corpsman could see right away that [the survivors] needed a doctor's care. While the bureaucrats were arguing about this, Michael did his job.'' 

Copyright 2000 the Miami Herald.
Republished here with the permission of the Miami Herald. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the written approval of The Miami Herald.