What exactly comprises a “disaster?” The American College of Emergency Physicians has defined the term as “a sudden massive disproportion between hostile elements of any kind and survival resources that are available to counterbalance these hostile elements in the shortest period of time” (1).

In a small airport supporting a town of 10,000 an aircraft accident involving 4 or 5 casualties can constitute a disaster by this definition, whereas at Kennedy Airport (JKF) with its large depots of medical support, and where our experience in this area has been considerable, it would take many more casualties to qualify as a disaster. “Black Sunday” at Tenerife, with 500 casualties in a single incident (2), focused world attention on the need for more adequate casualty care of air crashes at airports, particularly at airports that handle wide-bodied jets. In our efforts to improve the methods of “bringing the hospital to the emergency rather than the emergency to the hospital,” the “workshop” at Kennedy Airport has evolved over the years from a cumbersome inflatable unit with limited mobility, to a Mobile Emergency Hospital with a capacity of 100 beds and an operating room (3).

In the past year, we have developed an even more practicable Mobile Emergency Hospital, the size of a standard cargo container, 40 feet long by 8 feet wide and 8 feet high with 4-wheel drive and self-propelled at 55 miles per hour, capable of being lifted by helicopter, flown in a Lockheed C130 or cargo 747, placed on a railroad flat-bed or transported as a container on the deck of a ship (4,5).