Deadliest Sea (19 page)

Now that the swimmer was out the door, McLaughlin would be the second eyes on the helo’s altitude. He continually scanned the gauges that covered the panel in front of him, and called out the size and frequency of the incoming swells to help DeBolt manage the hoist. The strong wind was working in the rescuers’ favor. Often the Jayhawk’s 100 mph rotor wash overwhelms people in the water, but with the gusts off the nose blowing most of the rotor wash behind the helicopter, the rescuers were able to fly closer to the survivor than usual.

DeBolt was kneeling at the open cabin door, attached to the
roof by a canvas gunner’s belt that would hold him to the helo even if he tumbled out the opening. It was DeBolt’s job to make sure the hoist cable didn’t become tangled around itself, in the aircraft’s landing gear, or around a person in the water. As he lowered Starr-Hollow toward the surface, DeBolt leaned out into the darkness, eyes glued to his swimmer’s neon yellow helmet.

“Swimmer going down. Swimmer halfway down,” he continued through the ICS.

From the waves, Ryan Shuck saw the bright light of the helicopter fifty feet above, and the outline of the rescue swimmer falling slowly toward the surface. Ryan started swimming as fast as he could toward the rescuer.

As Starr-Hollow sank toward the waves on the thin metal line, he could see the fisherman trying to swim for him. With his harness clipped into the talon hook at the end of the hoist line, the Coast Guard rescuer had both his hands free for swimming or to grab on to a survivor. But he wasn’t close enough. Starr-Hollow seemed to be bobbing up and down, twenty feet at a time, as the waves swelled and retreated beneath him. As the aircrew struggled to keep the helo stable, the rescue swimmer found himself skimming forty or fifty feet horizontally over the water. Meanwhile, Ryan, too, was pushed all over by the waves and was fighting to move toward Starr-Hollow.

Finally, DeBolt placed the rescue swimmer just feet from Ryan, who reached out toward Starr-Hollow as the swimmer called to him.

“Swimmer in the water,” the flight mech announced through the ICS as Starr-Hollow hit the waves.

Ryan watched as the rescuer hit the ocean waist-deep, and was carried right to him by the wind.

“Stop swimming!” Starr-Hollow yelled.

DeBolt fed out more cable and directed Bonn to back the aircraft away from the men in the water. Starr-Hollow would remain attached to the hoist; feeding out the extra cable would give him some more room to maneuver, while backing away would help ensure that the extra line didn’t get tangled in itself, or worse, around their swimmer or survivor. If the line suddenly became taut—from aircraft movement or from a large wave dropping out from under the men in the water—Starr-Hollow and the fisherman could be jerked violently out of the waves.

“Swimmer is at the survivor,” DeBolt announced as, forty feet below, Starr-Hollow grabbed on to Ryan’s arm.

Ryan could feel the swimmer’s strength instantly. He began to relax.

“How’re you doing?” Starr-Hollow yelled over the thud of the rotors above.

“Okay,” Ryan answered. “Okay.”

Starr-Hollow told Ryan his name, and asked if Ryan could keep his arms still, as tight as he could against his sides.

“Yes,” Ryan nodded, “I can do whatever you want me to do.”

Starr-Hollow had a simple harness, called a rescue strop, slung over his shoulder. It took him ten seconds to cinch it over Ryan’s chest and clip the tightened harness into the talon hook on the end of the hoist line. Then he gave DeBolt the thumbs-up, the signal to hoist them out of the water. The hook would carry the weight of both men as they were pulled up, Starr-Hollow holding Ryan’s head and torso steady between his own legs.

The harness felt tight around Ryan’s chest, but the ride was quick. Within fifteen seconds, he was crawling toward the back of the Jayhawk and Bonn was flying toward the next closest light, about one hundred yards away. They came into a hover, and again Starr-Hollow went down on the cable with the quick
strop while Bonn maneuvered the helicopter in response to DeBolt, who was reporting the swimmer’s every movement, and McLaughlin, who was calling out the size and frequency of the incoming waves.

“I knew you guys would make it,” the second fisherman said to Starr-Hollow when the swimmer reached him in the breaking seas. It was hard to have much of a conversation above the noise of the helicopter. But again, Starr-Hollow secured the fisherman in the strop and explained to him that he had to keep his arms down, straight at his sides to prevent the simple device from slipping up and over his head. Then he gave DeBolt the thumbs-up.

I
N THE FOUR YEARS HE’D BEEN
in Kodiak, Starr-Hollow had twice been sent for a week of advanced training on the coast of Oregon. The Advanced Helicopter Rescue School, known as AHRS (pronounced “Arse”) is held eight times a year, in late fall and early winter. The course is timed to take advantage of the huge swells that form where the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean on the border of Oregon and Washington. In five mornings of instruction, the students—eight swimmers, four mechanics, and four pilots—are schooled in advanced rescue techniques in a classroom in Astoria, Oregon. In the afternoons they fly and train in the Middle Grounds of the Columbia River Bar and on the cliffs near Cape Disappointment, Washington, where Lewis and Clark first saw the Pacific in 1805. Tourists and locals alike often gather on the beach to watch the helicopter teams pluck dummies from the crumbling cliffs.

All four men in the Jayhawk had been to the Astoria school, where they practiced conning commands in the massive offshore swells. Back in Kodiak, they flew training missions all the time. Every day of the week, at least a couple of the air station’s helos
would be up, practicing for every possible scenario. They would simulate engine failures, fires in the cockpit, and anything else that could potentially go wrong with the aircraft. They practiced dropping their swimmer to small boats and into the water and hoisting him up again in different situations. They had standards to meet. Every six months, each crew member had to complete a set number of trainers to maintain their qualifications to fly.

The training at the Advanced Helicopter Rescue School, though, was a level beyond the norm. Even though Alaska has the most extreme flying in the country, the crews have Coast Guard–wide weather limits for training. At AHRS, these limits are lifted a bit and the crews have the chance to practice in conditions they rarely—if ever—encounter at their home stations.

Now that training was paying off. Normally, Bonn and McLaughlin would never drop their swimmer into seas as violent as these just for practice. But at AHRS, the waves had been pretty similar. They’d had the opportunity to see exactly how people in the water—people tethered to their aircraft with a potentially deadly cable—reacted to enormous seas. And they’d had a chance to practice the advanced communication skills needed to simultaneously manage a complicated hoist and difficult weather conditions.

After a while, the training at the Columbia River Bar had begun to feel like clockwork. Tonight, they would get into the same rhythm. Each member of the crew knew what to do. Now, methodically, step by step, they’d do it.

W
ITH TWO SURVIVORS SAFELY INSIDE THE HELICOPTER
, Bonn piloted the helo over to a group of people who had linked arms in the water. The quick strop system is the fastest way to get a
single, conscious, cooperative victim out of the ocean. Now the crew decided to switch from that harness to their metal rescue basket. The basket is generally considered a safer hoisting option for anyone having trouble breathing. The quick strop pulls tightly around a survivor’s chest, but there is no strap in the basket. The victim simply sits inside the high-walled box until it’s brought inside the helicopter. The basket is also faster for lifting multiple victims because the rescue swimmer stays in the water to prep the next person while the first person is lifted.

DeBolt lowered Starr-Hollow into the water on the hoist line, a few yards from the survivors. The swimmer unhooked his harness from the cable, and swam toward the group of fishermen. Meanwhile, DeBolt drew the cable back up to the aircraft door, grabbed the hook, and attached it to the top of the rescue basket’s metal bales.

Starr-Hollow quickly swam up and down the line of men. There were six of them, locked elbow to elbow. They were getting twisted and turned and washed over by the waves. The swimmer’s first task was to determine who was the worst off—who would go first.

The swimmer could tell that the fishermen had little mobility in the thick Gumby suits. Watching them struggle in the water was like watching someone trying to run a race in a sleeping bag, Starr-Hollow thought. Compared to the fishermen, he was competing in jeans and a T-shirt. The buoyancy of Starr-Hollow’s dry suit was almost neutral, making it relatively easy for the rescuer to swim among the swells. A Gumby suit, on the other hand, has a buoyancy of almost 40 pounds. Even a very strong man would have great difficulty diving down below a breaking wave while wearing one.

Starr-Hollow peeled the first survivor from the group, swam
him over a few yards away from the other fishermen, and signaled for DeBolt to drop the basket. The mesh metal box has red floats on either end—each printed with the words “stay seated”—that prevent it from sinking. The basket is rated to hold up to 600 pounds, though in practice, it’s extremely rare to lift more than one person at a time. There’d been cases in which women and children, and very slight men dressed in street clothes, had been brought up two at a time. The typical fisherman? Even without a Gumby, he was going up alone.

As Starr-Hollow helped the first man into the basket, he held the excess cable away from the compartment to avoid tangling. When DeBolt began raising the basket, Starr-Hollow hung his weight onto the bottom. He used his body like an anchor until the last possible moment, preventing the basket, and its passenger, from swinging too wildly above the waves.

Forty feet above, DeBolt maneuvered the first man into the cabin as Starr-Hollow swam back to the group of fishermen. The bottom of the basket can be raised just above the edge of the aircraft floor. The flight mechanic grabs the basket, pulls it into the cabin, and tips it on its side to allow the passenger to climb out. The first couple of guys from the group of six easily crawled out of the basket and huddled into the growing mass of fishermen against the back wall of the Jayhawk. As each man emerged, he was embraced by those who’d come before—most of them still barely recognizable in their hooded suits. By the time the third man was up, each new arrival brought a round of cheering and high-fives.

Then DeBolt pulled a smaller-framed man into the cabin. The flight mech got the basket into the helicopter, but the fisherman inside was paralyzed with fear. This guy is obviously in shock, DeBolt thought. The fisherman wouldn’t budge from the
basket. He looked scared to death. Over the deafening thud of the rotors, DeBolt yelled for the men huddled to the side of the cabin to help him get their friend out of the basket. Several men grabbed onto the fisherman’s fingers, attempting to pry open his grip on the metal rails. It was Joey Galbreath, a processor from Washington State. When the others called his name he just stared straight ahead like he was in a trance and wouldn’t let go. It took several minutes, even with DeBolt and the fishermen working together, to pull Joey out of the basket and get it back out the door toward the next man in the water.

E
VAN
H
OLMES WAS CONFIDENT
that the helicopter had seen them. It had been directly overhead; the spotlight was right on them. He’d waved his arms.

“They know we’re here,” he told P. Ton and Kenny. “They see us. They’re coming back. We just have to hang in there.”

Evan was in the rear of the three-man chain. He was the only one who had his arms free, and he kept trying to steer the other guys so that the waves would hit them all in the back instead of the face. Each time they were pummeled from the front, water leaked down into their suits. It was so dark, though, that it was hard to see where the water was coming from. It was only every once in a while that a little sliver of moon poked through the clouds. When they rose up on the top of a swell, Evan could see the helicopter in the distance, hovering. Then they’d plunge back down, and the chopper would fall out of sight.

Finally, the light came back, and settled overhead. “No shit,” Evan said. “Thank you.” He watched the rescue swimmer drop down from the open door. “U.S. Coast Guard!” Starr-Hollow yelled as he reached the men in the waves.

Evan pointed to Kenny. The young processor was nearly
unconscious. A few minutes before, he’d started drifting away from the other men. He couldn’t hold on to P. Ton’s legs anymore. Evan feared that Kenny was done.

“Hey, man,” Evan yelled at Starr-Hollow. He motioned toward Kenny. “This guy, he ain’t doing too well. Get him first.”

Starr-Hollow could tell on his own that Kenny was the worst off of the three men. He loaded him into the basket, gave DeBolt the thumbs-up, and then swam back toward Evan and P. Ton.

“How are you doing?” Starr-Hollow yelled.

“I’m okay,” Evan answered. “Well, I’m not okay. Look, I’m doing okay right this second. I don’t know how much longer, though.”

Evan had seen how long the helo had been out there picking people up, and he’d seen some movies. He knew P. Ton should go up next. “Shit, man, do you have room in that helicopter for me?” he yelled to the swimmer.

Starr-Hollow grabbed onto Evan and looked him right in the eyes. “I tell you what,” he said. “I’ve got room for you. You’re my last guy.”

I
T HAD BEEN CLOSE TO AN HOUR
since the 60 Jayhawk had arrived at the sinking site. They’d just kept moving from one light to another light and another. Now they had almost a dozen men in oversized, waterlogged suits piled on top of one another inside the helicopter. It was almost 6:00
A.M
. For most of the past hour, the cabin door had been kept open. The metal floor was a sheet of ice. The last fishermen to be brought up had been more hypothermic than the first. Some of them couldn’t seem to hold themselves upright. Even though DeBolt had ordered two of the men to crowd onto the tiny console between the pilots, the back cabin was packed tight with bodies.