ANDY BRACKBILL AND HIS WIFE, Pamela, were up late Tuesday night and into the wee hours of Wednesday. He passed the time scanning Flight Radar 24, a flight tracking app. Brackbill said he was“doing my usual clicking on certain planes/helicopters at different places around the country, just to see who they were and where they were going.”

Something on the map caught Brackbill’s attention. A flurry of medical helicopters was leaving New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport (JFK), heading out in all different directions, one leaving one right after another. He wondered if they were evacuating COVID-19 patients from overwhelmed New York hospitals to facilities with more resources.

“My wife and I took time to weep and pray for those who are desperate for care and possibly gasping for their breath on those helicopters, but also with thankfulness for the sacrifice of those involved in these efforts and the amazing teamwork that would go along with these efforts,” said Brackbill.

On Twitter, other aviation enthusiasts puzzled over the swarm of medevacs at JFK. “Lots of EMS helicopters heading to JFK airport right now. One just departed, am I missing something?” one wrote.

Others responded that the medevacs must be picking up organs or protective equipment unloaded from a plane at JFK.

“Maybe ... just surprised to see so many machines going in and out of there,” one person replied.

“It’s odd,” another agreed.

Brackbill’s guess was right, according to the medical evacuation teams working that night. A New York hospital had to evacuate 28 intubated patients Tuesday because its piped oxygen system “was having trouble delivering enough oxygen,” according to Hartford Hospital’s Life Star helicopter service. Life Star evacuated one of those patients to Albany Medical Center, in the state capital.

It was a small Dunkirk moment: Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and upstate New York coming to the rescue of the Big Apple. Most of the flurry of medevacs that night went to Albany, the plain city that on a normal day receives indifference from its glittery southern neighbor. Helicopters from Hackensack Meridian Health in New Jersey, Hartford Hospital in Connecticut, and Life Net of New York flew to JFK, then on to Albany. A medevac from Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia, around the same time, also departed JFK to go to Albany, well out of its normal flight pattern.