A life-and-death difference

Sea Power, Aug 1997

By their nature, the type of search-and-rescue missions that "Team Coast Guard" carries out usually happen in the worst possible conditions-in the dead of winter, in the middle of the night, and in storms, floods, or hurricanes. The following, taken from Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Robert E. Kramek's 1997 State of the Coast Guard report, illustrates the life-anddeath difference the Coast Guard makes.

Late on the night of Jan. 16,1997, during a severe nor'easter of howling winds, heavy seas, deep darkness, and frigid cold, the fishing vessel Trinity broadcast a distress call saying it was sinking 63 miles south of Long Island, N.Y. The cutter USCGC Seneca, already at sea, was quickly diverted to the scene, and Coast Guard Air Station Cape Cod launched a Jayhawk helicopter.

When the Jayhawk crew arrived at the scene, they found that the Trinity's crewmembers had abandoned ship and were in a life raft, which was being brutally tossed about in 45-knot winds and 20-foot seas. At great risk to himself, the Jayhawk's lone rescue swimmer went into the water and successfully lifted three of the Trinity crewmembers to safety in the helicopter.

Two other members of the Trinitys crew still were awaiting rescue, but the weather was so severe and forbidding that the rescue swimmer, a young Coast Guardsman in top physical condition, was completely exhausted.

Fortunately, by that time, the Seneca also was on the scene and-in a display of exceptional seamanship in the rough and stormy seasmaneuvered alongside the life raft to effect the rescue of the remaining two crewmembers.

About the same time that the crew of the Trinity was being rescued, the crew of the fishing vessel Commodore, approximately 200 miles away to the east of Cape Cod, was also abandoning ship after activating their emergency locator beacon and radioing for help. Another Jayhawk helicopter was launched, and a Coast Guard Falcon aircraft, already airborne and assisting yet another vessel off the coast of Maine, was immediately diverted to the scene. The Jayhawk arrived first andhaving located the Commodore's crew in the life raft-deployed two rescue swimmers into the water. The swimmers rescued all six Commodore crewmembers.

"Consequently, in the span of a few hours on a single wintry night," Kramek said in his State of the Coast Guard report, "the Coast Guard was able to save 11 people from certain death." But it would not have happened if the men and women of Team Coast Guard had not already been on station and on patrol, ready to respond.