Civil Defense Emergency Hospital-Contents Page 1

McKinney,
Texas
PDH Salvage

PDH Main Page
McKinney Main
McKinney 1
McKinney 2
McKinney 3
Columbus PDH

Back to Civil Defense Museum Main

In this section I tried to catalog what I found in the remains of the McKinney Texas PDH. I guess this is a bit of a "combination" section that shows what a PDH was to be and what remains of PDHs now. I don't have any knowledge of medical items or procedures so I tried my best with the descriptions. Click photos to see larger.

Here is what's left of the junk in McKinney after 2 months of digging and sorting. I spent about 50 to 60 hours total digging through the pile of stuff. I arranged what was left so the Job Corps folks would have an easier job of cleaning out the building. This picture was taken looking in from the entry door towards the south side of the building. A year or so later all the old buildings were torn down. I doubt if this stuff was ever cleaned out. The building was probably bulldozed with everything inside.

This is the north side of the building after my salvage job. This building had no climate control and wasn't completely sealed from the weather. Several of the cases were ruined by ants burrowing into them. All that is left here is junk to be thrown away.

Steel and Wooden Pole Litters

All the litters I have seen with PDH stocks have had the black FCDA marking on the bottom. FCDA stands for Federal Civil Defense Administration. That would date the litters in the 1950's some time although the cases were dated in the 60's. I have seen both steel pole and wooden pole type litters in PDH stocks. I was able to salvage 8 cases of litters from the McKinney PDH. The litters were still in like-new condition. The canvas was still drum taught and like new.

Anesthesia Apparatus
The Civil Defense PDH was to have 3 surgery stations. I found 3 almost fully intact Foregger anesthesia apparatus with the McKinney PDH remains. These apparatus had been pulled out of their crates. I was able to assemble 2 complete apparatus and one incomplete apparatus from what was remaining. These apparatus were set up to use oxygen and nitrous oxide as well as ether. This picture is of one of the complete apparatus that I was able to put together. The glass device on the left is the ether vaporizer assembly. The breathing hoses and mask were still packed and I didn't open them so they aren't in the picture. These machines were eventually donated to a group that does army field hospital reenactments. The group sets up a complete WWII type army field hospital and demonstrate field hospital procedures at community events. I wish I would have taken a better photo of this thing at the time. I had my old digital camera set to it's low setting and this apparatus was kind of buried in the pile in my garage at the time I took this photo.

The oxygen and nitrous tanks for the anesthesia machines were still there at the time I cleaned the McKinney stuff out. I tried a few of them and they were empty though all were in good condition as far as I could see. All of the tanks had these "Civil Defense" labels cast into the top of the tank. The right photo above is one of the oxygen tanks.

At left above is an old photo of a surgical station for a Model 62 PDH. At the right in the photo is a Foregger anesthesia machine with a nitrous and oxygen tank hooked up. The right photo above shows the type of anesthesia apparatus used with the earlier Model 53-57 PDHs. It looks very similar to the later unit but it uses the smaller oxygen and nitrous tanks. The McKinney PDH had very few remaining surgical station pieces remaining. The PDH stock in Gainesville Texas still had surgical tables, lamps, anesthesia apparatus and some other items. These were salvaged by the Nimitz Museum in Fredericksburg Texas for their field hospital display. See photos below.