Historic Bering Sea rescue defies all odds, saves 42
“Mayday, mayday, mayday. United States Coast Guard, this is the Alaska Ranger! Our position is 5-3-5-3 decimal 4 north, 1-6-9-5-8 west. We are flooding, taking on water in our rudder room.”
As this mayday call raced across the Bering Sea on Easter morning bound for the radio room of any Coast Guard rescue center within reach, 47 fishermen on the Alaska Ranger were donning their survival gear for what would play out as one of the largest and most dramatic rescue cases the Coast Guard has ever responded to.
The Coast Guard Cutter Munro, a 378-foot high endurance cutter was on patrol near the fishing fleet in the Bering Sea. With the wind at its back, the Munro was strategically positioned to quickly respond to any vessels in distress.
The Alaska Ranger was 120 miles west of Dutch Harbor and enduring blistering gale force winds, temperatures below freezing and swelling seas between 10 and 20 feet. No one had any idea the Alaska Ranger was crashing through pack ice and would soon begin to sink.
Without warning frigid water began rushing into the ships rudder room, quickly filling adjoining spaces, disabling the ship. The Alaska Ranger had lost all steering and power and was now at the mercy of the unforgiving Bering Sea.
The captain of the Alaska Ranger made two calls that would help save the lives of nearly everyone aboard. The first call was for the crew to get into their survival suits, deploy as many life rafts as they could and abandon ship. The second was the mayday call to the Coast Guard.
On the Munro it was just after 3 a.m. Most of the crew were sound asleep as the Bering Sea rocked their cutter in some of the same waves and howling winds the Alaska Ranger was enduring. Red lights illuminated the hallways. The hum of the diesel engines created a soothing lullaby for those aboard.
The calm was abruptly broken by the crackle of the intercom system as the booming voice of the commanding officer, Capt. Craig Lloyd, rang out among the empty halls and quiet rooms. The crew quickly began to roll out of their racks, listening intently as Lloyd explained the situation to them.
As soon as the Munro got the mayday from the Alaska Ranger they immediately pointed the ship toward their position. The officer of the deck called down to the engine room to get both turbines on-line and started plotting the fastest course toward the Alaska Rangers position, 120 miles west of Dutch Harbor.
Soon crew members were rushing about the cutter, scurrying through tight corridors, going up and down ladder wells. All of them trying to get to their assigned areas, as well as trying to prepare for what was to come.
The crew kicked into action and began making preparations for taking on survivors by converting the mess deck to a treatment center, heating blankets in ovens, breaking out survival gear, and getting the flight deck ready to launch their HH-65 Dolphin helicopter. The crew would also prepare to recover survivors from both the Dolphin and the HH-60 Jayhawk stationed on St. Paul, a small island in the middle of the Bering Sea.
The crew down in the engine room had already started tweaking the engines pushing them for everything they had. The Munro would soon reach speeds unheard of aboard a Coast Guard high-endurance cutter.
Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away in the opposite direction, the air crew from St. Paul awoke to the sound of a ringing phone. Pilots and crew bolted to the locker rooms to get dressed-out in all of their survival gear. Ground support jumped in vehicles and sped over to the hanger where they started prepping the helicopter for flight.
The air crew got as much last minute information as they could before getting into a truck and driving over to the hanger.
Once the Jayhawk was airborne, the crew in the back, consisting of Petty Officer 2nd Class Robert DeBolt and Petty Officer 2nd Class Obrien Hollow, began reaching out on their radio to the Alaska Ranger crew. The two pilots, Lt. Brian McLaughlin and Lt. Steve Bonn both slide their night vision goggles into place from on top of their helmets.
The night was pitch black, the only thing visible for the small helicopter crew, between the barrages of snow, was the inky blackness of the vast ocean
“As the helicopter approached the Alaska Ranger, before it had sunk, we were able to reach them on the radio about 30 miles north of their position,” said McLaughlin. “The concern in the voice on the other end of the radio was palpable and filled our aircraft with the looming dread that what we were heading for was very real. The good news was that everyone had been able to don their survival suits before abandoning ship. They stated there were only seven people left aboard and they were getting ready to get into the rafts”.
At first, as the air crew approached the scene, they saw a few strobe lights blinking on the distant horizon and figured those were the rafts. As they got a little closer and there was a fourth light, fifth, sixth, and so on, it quickly became apparent that there were dozens of people in the water.
The first set of strobe lights they flew over was a pair of survivors in survival suits waving at them. As the pilots flew overhead they tried to get a look at the whole situation and as they climbed a little higher they saw the ocean flashing at them over a mile-long stretch, yet the Alaska Ranger was nowhere to be found.
The crew made some split second decisions and decided to hoist the people that were not in rafts first.
“We just picked a spot and began hoisting,” said McLaughlin. “I called the one raft that had a handheld radio and explained to them what we were doing while the rest of my crew was busy getting the rescue swimmer out the door.”
That’s were Hollow’s job with the air crew really came into play. One of Hollow’s responsibilities as a rescue swimmer was to go down into the freezing water, beneath the unrelenting rotor wash and sea swells to pluck people out of the cold, unforgiving Bering Sea
from -http://uscgalaska.blogspot.com/2009/01/historic-bering-sea-rescue-defies-all.html
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