THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, November 6, 1996 TAG: 9611060403
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: HAMPTON LENGTH: 49 lines
Paul A. Blais survived the terrorist bombing in Saudi Arabia, but he may never fully recover.
``He doesn't walk, he's got an awful lot of brain damage. His legs are still oozing,'' said his grandmother, Elizabeth Blais of Orlando, Fla.
Maria and Curtis Taylor rejoiced when they learned that their son, an Air Force senior airman, had not died as they first believed in the June 25 bombing of the Khobar Towers military housing complex in Saudi Arabia.
Instead, Blais was in a coma in a Dhahran hospital and had been mistakenly identified as another airman.
Blais suffered severe brain damage when a fuel truck filled with explosives detonated outside his dormitory, shearing off the face of the building and killing 19 airmen. ``He impacted a wall pretty much headlong,'' said his natural father, Paul Blais Sr., of Orlando.
Four months later, the younger Blais cannot walk or eat by himself, and must be fed through a stomach tube.
Blais had been a disc jockey before joining the Air Force and becoming a radio operator aboard C-130s. Now, the 26-year-old speaks in a monotone and with difficulty, his father said.
It could be more than two years before doctors fully know how badly Blais was injured, his father said.
After the blast, Blais was flown from Dhahran to an American hospital in Germany, then to Walter Reed Army Hospital near Washington.
After about a month at Walter Reed, he was moved to the Veterans Administration hospital in Tampa, Fla., which specializes in brain trauma. He was discharged last week and is now staying with his mother and stepfather, who moved from Hampton to Tampa to be with him.
``His mother is doing a bang up job of taking care of him,'' said Elizabeth Blais. ``His mother sleeps on the floor by his bed because he wakes up and he doesn't know where he is. ... The poor kid didn't ask for any of this.''
Once it became evident the airman may never fully recover from his injuries, the Air Force medically retired Blais but will provide him with a pension, his father said. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Paul A. Blais may never fully recover from the injuries he sustained
while in Saudi Arabia; for a time after the blast, his family
thought he had been killed. Severe brain damage has left him unable
to walk or eat by himself.
KEYWORDS: CASUALTIES U.S. AIRFORCE TERRORIST BOMBING
SURVIVOR INJURIES SAUDIA ARABIA by CNB