Lost in the Water Rescue! | Coast Guard Alaska | Full Episode

did you know out these outbreaks coming off it starts out starting we just got a call of uh two persons in the water uh their skiff has overturned and apparently they called 9-1-1 from their cell phone in the water the last we had heard was they were trying to swim to shore the vast alaskan wilderness a place where beauty is cloaked by danger here every day the highly trained men and women of the u.s coast guard risk their lives to save others america's deadliest waters are protected by coast guard alaska two people on the water time is critical we can't get out of here soon enough the area we cover is all the way from yakutat down to ketchikan and then all the way to the canadian border so you get somebody in the water it's like finding a needle in a haystack sometimes especially with their only their head sticking out because the rest of their bodies under the water we know that there are two alaska state trooper vessels on scene that are searching what they can there's also a fixed-wing asset at our wrangle and we will let you know what those are garage our biggest worries are the two individuals in the water water average temperature is 47 degrees we're looking at 20 minutes until they're succumbed by hypothermia so right now we need to get to them as fast as possible both state troopers are in small boats section for the rescue 32 roger that up here so it looks like it opens up more on the inside in order to get from us to the location is three different mountain ranges on three different islands but knowing that there's piw we decided to take as many chances as we could to cut down on the time to get over there yeah it's like they're approximately two or five mics out from being a scene we're coming down to about 150 feet to get below the cloud layer follow the small little channels best we can we have an estimated last known position when you're ready to copy we're not real sure exactly where they're at our plan is to overfly the area fly along the beaches find out if they've actually made landfall and just hope that they actually have are believed to be in the water one is wearing a red rain suit and bolts are wearing live jackets hot coffee and sector that's a good copy and all thank you so much for the last known position that will so we got a good report that they were swimming for level island so hopefully best case scenario they'd be sitting on the beach we pick them up maybe treat them for hypothermia and get them home safe and sound but the currents and the winds and everything they may never make it to shore and they may be you know making their way out to the gulf alaska at that point so looking for a piw a life jacket or something that's gonna have a similar float we get on scene we start searching all the myriad little rocks and islands uh in the area i'm hoping that they were able to make it ashore so there's a fixed link around three o'clock they're searching that little bay bank there's a trooper at three u.s coast guard sector genesis wrangle state trooper i'm gonna work back around level island from the east side to the west side the troopers decided to follow the tide rips around to douglas bay they're searching over there we're searching our area yeah wrangle trooper go ahead for the rainbow trooper visibility is excellent i haven't seen a thing next time it's left an hour and 45 minutes they've been in the water [Music] once we've exhausted all the possible rocks ledges islands they could have gotten to we start our search drill in the water as best we can whole search area goes completely across this channel from this side to that side see a white piece of paper there's a blue one over there we find a cooler floating in the water some potential other debris that doesn't look like it's been in the water for very long there's another little something right out the door i get a bad feeling that they are further that way tied ripped through here and if they were here and they were trying to swim towards level island they were going against the size they're never gonna make it yeah well the good news is the life jackets we had been searching for two two and a half hours at that point you're kind of starting to do the calculations in your head of how long someone's surviving that water sector juno state troopers on one six who located an overturned skiff near douglas bay standby for coordinates i hear that just after our second hour into searching the state troopers found an overturned boat no individuals around it but the boat did match the uh description of what we were looking for they're down coming on the left side right now yeah you want to keep searching down this one tracking that way yeah i think it's probably a good bit once they find the vessel that kind of reinvigorates all of us now we have a specific location where we need to search and we start going down current from there we're able to pick up other various parts of debris cooler maybe like a fuel canister so it's following a decent track line from the boat getting to that point where i can't see him come on starting to get dark so at time is of the essence at this point so we're just open on hope that we see someone waving from the water from the water radar for six yep standby turn back around low and behold the flight mech notices somebody in the water we're in a hover running our rescue checks as soon as possible so we can get the swimmer in the water hoping that he's all right okay i got him laying on his back seth was the first one to spot him uh he had some movement to it that it looked like maybe it was trying to signal us but as soon as we had the rotor wash hit it we could tell immediately that this individual is deceased right around the corner all right i'm backing off petersburg in the water just around the corner from you guys good copy on that we're in route all right i see them they're coming the trooper bulb being very close uh it's actually faster to vector them in and have them pick him up and there's the potential that the other individual is still alive and we're still the best search asset so i think i know we'll continue ahead we'll do a trek line ripple on the shore there i hope the guy climbed out maybe the other guy's real close after we found the first individual our main priority is to get looking for the second one as soon as possible there's a slight glimmer of hope that he might be alive so we'll go kind of up to the boat and turn around [Music] two persons in the water their skiff has overturned up here with the water temperatures being what they are your uh life is counted in a matter of minutes we find the first individual and it's pretty clear he's not moving uh he's deceased we vector the trooper boat in they recover him and we head back to the skiff looking for uh the second individual i got the other one got him down roger coming up on your 12 o'clock when we were making our way back along the track line i noticed uh the second individual we got a second piw copy that we're in rope is he holding something kill him pretty much immediately find the second individual again clear that uh that he's deceased troopers come and and they're able to recover the body negative we'll i think everyone's pretty dejected in the aircraft it's absolutely not the outcome that uh that any of us wanted damn it i wonder when they to come because we've been on scene for a while i don't know two hours in this order's a long time especially in sharks this case kind of illustrates the dangers of alaska and how fragile i guess life is up here uh when you're face to face with the elm well the families will appreciate that we found them individuals don't realize how dangerous this area can be things turn bad very quickly up here and when they do usually somebody dies from [Music] it 1915 with onset of symptoms she needs to be in kodiak hospital no later than 23 15. i received a phone call there was a possible stroke victim 140 miles north of kodiak island we had a four-hour window to pick up that patient and get her back to anchorage or back to kodiak the two higher level trauma care centers where they can actually treat the possible stroke yes sir go forward go straight over the bridge now you guys gotta lie that's what we're going through do you know if he's right on the lake uh they weren't very clear about that the initial call had come from the individual's husband the party was in a remote wilderness lodge on the banks of the alagnac river very remote area i hear this guy's cutting down a landing pad for us with a chainsaw that's what i heard yeah i hope before you guys cut down his backyard sounds like they're on that lakeshore as long as they get to a beach we can hoist them as we were crossing through the mountain range the fog definitely began to lower into the valleys we had to alter our flight path a few times so we would stay over ground that we knew was going to be safe some glaciers off the left there they're wrong enjoying a little scenery on this during of course no no nothing at all you'll probably make it back for four and a half hours after symptoms i wish we could have done it faster but we didn't get fast enough it wouldn't find a little back up on the map with the clear i appreciate both of that no problem [Music] all right i want you guys to put a hoist right down on that brand on that dirt road okay that's good there wasn't any good place land because the ground was pretty moist if we would have landed the wheels would have sunk into the ground and there was a lot of trees and other hazards to the rotor blades in the area so we kind of just mixed the whole landing thing and that's when they decided to lower me down is going down come in forward right [Music] once i was on the ground i walked over talked to the husband he walked me over to his wife so i could talk to her find out her condition see how she was doing and by the time i got out there she seemed pretty stable so we decided to do a basket recovery there was a few things in the area that just made a little more interesting we didn't want to hover right over the water because there was small boats right there that we would have probably impacted there was some trees in the area so it wasn't exactly ideal after i was able to get the survivor and the rescue swimmer back in the helicopter we said to get them secured away get back into forward flight had started taking care of her checking her pulse and all of her different signs weathering hoodie is getting worse sounds like we need to do plan now transiting to scene we were receiving information from the audio at kodiak that the weather in kodiak was rapidly deteriorating as were our chances of making it back in a timely manner with a survivor he's complete there was a medevac situation about 150 miles to the northwest of air station kodiak it was an elderly female who was exhibiting stroke-like symptoms so that was our mission to get her to a hospital within four hours of the initial stroke hey i'm gonna put her on ics so i can answer some questions okay sounds good i gave her oxygen and i started to get patient information from her finding out what was going on with her and if there was anything that i could do to make her more comfortable i just kept knocking into things and it was getting kind of giggly and i was a little flushy-mouthed i guess whether hoodie is getting worse sounds like we need to do playing now transiting to scene we were receiving information from the audio at kodiak that the weather in kodiak was rapidly deteriorating as were our chances of making it back in a timely manner with a survivor we're gonna go to anchorage yeah with your banking we turned around and started heading the way towards anchorage and once again conditions started deteriorating outside we're being diverted to go to home or not thanks center finally right as we were in route to anchorage i said let's go to homer and that was the faster easier way for us to do it so we're happy to hear go to homer i think we're back in our happy place here we'll stay with you and give you updates thank you so very much for your help [Music] once we landed in homer life flight came and once they did i talked to the paramedic on board there and i passed all my information to him have a good night we're gonna treat you like you're sicker than you are okay my name is linda branham and my husband chris and i own royal wolf lodge in katmai national park just before dinner one of our employees came upstairs to ask me a question and i walked across the room to speak with him and all of a sudden i started walking very strangely and i wasn't really in control of my own body so to speak calling the coast guard was our only option at that time there are no roads at our lodge that's float plains only our small single engine and airplanes cannot fly in the dark our staff they took me a short distance to the river we were on the road and we saw the lights coming and then i was taken to providence hospital and admitted into the er i was having small seizures and so once that was diagnosed i was put on anti-seizure medication and that was a good thing because i haven't had a seizure since then i admire the alaska coast guard vienna so much i feel very very lucky that we have them available it's a nice feeling to know that if we do need their help they will be there and that's the saving grace really in a remote area in alaska [Music] [Music] it's a lovely day for hockey i am uh lieutenant john philippis i'm an 860 pilot here at air station kodiak i'm out here playing a little hockey today what else are you gonna do at kodiak on a rainy four degree day we got uh ted eckhart 65 driver turned lumpkins down playing goalie 60 driver it's a great way to have a little fun killer exercise be a little credited i still scored on you it's a good time ready [Applause] the kodiak parks and rec department does a great job they have uh weekly games for us novice players on saturdays and sundays you get out have a great workout we'll have a little fun [Music] [Applause] [Music] 20 days i'll go in i never skated before my life once or twice when i was a kid one of the things i wanted to do when i came up to alaska was learned skate all right stop tony nice stuff bought some gear came on here and i learned the hard way trial by fire just jumped out there and started skating now that i've sort of figured out how to stay up most of the time put some hockey pads on and learn how to be a goalie [Music] where's my defense [Applause] you know we're in the plane uh we're very professional we know our roles out here it's uh it's a good opportunity to kind of pick some energy out on each other nice job tony saving lives and saving goals it's kind of what i do look at that outfield mr flipwoods we looked at the buoys that fixed an entrance the wave height was six feet and the winds were 15 to 20. around 2 a.m we got a call saying there is a medevac off a cruise ship that's about 600 miles south they get any sleep not really a little bit some no not much for me either person had kidney failure so the plan was that they were going to go full speed north and for us to meet them for a first light [Music] hoist we launched out of here expecting to arrive at the ship by about four o'clock [Applause] [Music] we got a call saying there is a possible medevac off a cruise ship that's about 600 miles south kind of showing up down there 45 minutes on scene it's been another hour back yeah rip do you want to give uh ryan the rundown on how you're going to bring him like to pull or anything i'll try to get him in feet first get him up here and we'll both just kind of walk him in okay good thing on this we had a corpsman he hadn't been flying was too long and uh he was in there he was really professional it's good to have a third set of hands as well as another medical individual so doc said he did want a neb treatment regardless kind of depends on what his pulse is doing and then also if the uh the people on the cruiser gave him one prior just picking them up he was a known diabetic and they had administered some insulin too so that's definitely something you always want to be aware of because that can just turn on you really fast and that's a bad situation there's that one flip on the radar probably them we picked them up on radar about 25 miles out we were able to get their speed and course before we took off so we didn't have to search for them at all uh coast guard helicopter amsterdam tutu good morning do you have a specific spot that you usually hoist to on your vessel is the bowser area where we usually do our host we'll be on scene there and little over five minutes if you have any questions just to answer uh that spell on the students in five minutes professional the captain was all over it knew exactly what we were looking for and it was very easy to work with when we get to the ship we're basically looking for a good place to hoist in this case that was where they wanted us to go all right we're looking good right here all right if we get the horses [Music] with the cruise ship you do usually have a pretty large area to hoist it does make for a nice platform over deck he's hooking up right here we're in perfect position all right ready to pick up try to take the low taking the load and litter is off the deck he's once i get the individual in safe then we just simply go in pick up the rescue swimmer inside you're clear that hoist is complete right forward flight once i get the individual end safe i make sure they're stowed they have location they're comfortable they're warm secure the cabin and then start attending like any medical issues they gave him an albuterol treatment his blood sugar has been a little low okay and just basically look at the quality of his skin color and temperature he did have already an iv in place for a glucose and a saline lock on his other hand and then we just modern every five minutes blood pressure pulse blood sugar again i'm thinking about doing it just like right before we uh hand them off okay he's probably getting on a guardian jet wonder if jet's gonna be parked on our ramp or we're gonna have to taxi over the patient's gonna be transferred to a guardian jet and flown to seattle right up there it's not even five a.m it's my kind of circuit yeah that's your report for approach my name is angus bush i live in tacoma washington my folks came out to visit me and part of that visit was a cruise to alaska the seas were rough and i was dizzy i thought i was severely seasick the doc took the blood test and he says you need dialysis now we need to get you off the boat my kidneys completely shut down on me if i hadn't been rescued basically i would have gone into heart palpitations and then the rest of my body would have shut down until basically it became fatal now with the treatment all my systems are back to normal back to baseline i'm basically healthy again thanks thanks to the guys in the coast guard everybody on the dock everybody on the doctor gather around since day one since you came here to the academy i have been preaching what about accountability preaching accountability today we're hanging out with the state troopers going through their cold weather survival school it's extremely important to you know be familiar with the type of terrain that we're uh you know flying in and dealing with so uh being able to go through a course like this is a very good experience and uh these guys will get to learn a lot as well as us as well i'm gonna be honest with you it's a dangerous training area like you could fall and get hurt you gotta look out for each other okay my name is eric spitzer i'm a corporal with the alaska state troopers my job here is i'm a wilderness survival instructor basically our plan for the day is going out to a wilderness training site and we're gonna do a training evolution out there they're gonna have a bumpy start this morning because we're gonna get out there to the site and then they're gonna experience a catastrophic failure uh the boat sinking simulated of course they're gonna have 60 seconds to abandon ship dawn their immersion suits and survival swim over to our admin site in the training area [Music] hustle hustle hustle five four three two one you're done get the water in the water in the water go go go [Music] here in southeast alaska we are not in a very forgiving environment you got to have a good head on your shoulders you got to know exactly what you're doing when you're stuck in a situation uh out in the wilderness whether it be lost after a day of hiking or capsize your boat you have to swim to shore it's cold it's wet fires are hard to make shelters are hard to find you just got to be able to think out the box you get over here to shore and the first thing you do is what step inventory inventory get your stuff out and you should be inventorying your survival kit right now all right so you got climate duct tape right there already right on the outside that's awesome it's extremely important to figure out a way to use anything you find because honestly we come out here and all we've got is that tiny little tin with our survival gear in it and we've got to just you know use the resources out here whether it be natural resources or trash on the beach i've got a whole bunch of cotton balls soaked in vaseline good good couple trash bags fishing line yep the more creativity that you can demonstrate by the use of what you found the more points you get next thing is each individual on your team is going to make a fire i'll give you 10 minutes for prep time go [Music] if you bend it like just a little bit and it doesn't break like immediately don't use it like we just want some nice dry stuff the reason why we're doing this is because as alaska state troopers and as coast guard personnel we are out at the tip of the spear we are out helping people we are responding to emergencies so ultimately the people who are going to benefit from this is the citizens of alaska working together is crucial we got called in this morning to replace a crew that had been flying all night on a case of two individuals stranded somewhere over by ketchikan trucks removed cool priority protection ready for text the children of the folks that are missing reported them overdue they knew generally where they were going and how long they were going to be there and now that they haven't shown up it's a pretty good call that they're still out there somewhere and that they're in trouble or they would have been either made contact with someone or they would be home or take out checklist cooper ready for takeoff ready we found out that the crew last night has been searching all night long but the weather was so bad that there were some areas that they just weren't able to get into the visibility was just so poor so other agencies are searching right now right now let's give them a tentative epa of 2100. [Music] one of our biggest concerns is that up in alaska when you're in a cold weather survival situation like this you don't have a lot of time they were overdue on their float plan they were out for five days what if they got in trouble on the first day and they've been in trouble since then so you you go to start thinking about what kind of gear do they have do they have the proper survival gear do they have enough food if they did hit a rock would they lose all their food do they have protection from bears you know these are all the things you have to take into account for when somebody goes missing like that tentative epa of 2100. we got called in this morning to replace a crew that had been flying all night on a case of uh two individuals stranded uh somewhere over by ketchikan guys we're at 200 feet visibility at least a couple miles it's a pretty large search area the guys that searched last night covered most of it but due to low ceilings they weren't able to search everything visibility is good to say it opened up nice down here yeah look at that there's a couple of uh surface vessels out there looking both from the state and from the coast guard and those guys are trying to get into as many areas as they can but obviously with the helicopter we're able to get much further up into the small streams and from what we understand uh the couple was in a 20-foot jet boat so they probably got up into some pretty shallow water that's not accessible from a lot of the search boats uh we're gonna go in through the back way up to burroughs the only thing about what i'm about to do is we're gonna have to go under or over one of the sets of power lines the issue with power lines is sometimes they can be extremely difficult to see and they're to jump up where you're not expecting them like in the lower 48 you're always looking for towers power lines etc we can kind of come become complacent up here for those sort of things because they're so rare that one is probably five or six hundred feet okay so there shouldn't be any other logging wires or surprises back in there right it's just that one okay cool thank you we actually plugged it into our computer so that an alarm would go off when we were within a mile of it so we all knew where it was the guys in the back could see it we could see it and it just was fortunate that once we got up to it the cloud layer uh let up a little bit so guys still about two miles out from the power line but what we're looking for right now is the cut where they pick back up so there's two big towers on either side but the wires running across and then the cuts in the forest where they run in and out so that's usually the easiest way to steal so they're basically going to leave the summit on either side of us you can see how high those are it basically goes summit to summit is open and there's the lines right there high on the right side coming across right gentlemen's site inside let's go about there's a set that shoots off to the right it goes down you can see the cut though off at under three o'clock coming all back down here straight ahead all right that should be it from a rescue 3-2 roger that's a good copy all right so they've been located but uh they're stranded somewhere and they're getting ready to pass coordinates on our transit down we got a message from sector that said that they had actually located the couple ketchikan mountain rescue personnel that were on board a civilian aircraft they were up searching a couple of areas that they had some local knowledge of where they might be and they actually overflew then they had set up a camp site at the base of a waterfall way back up at the head of burroughs bay and uh sector two three two request conditions of survivors and reporting stories does someone have comments with them via radio distribution sector negative uh no communications with them at this time uh they were located by the uh other aircraft in the area the cessna uh beyond that uh anything else is unknown over the area that we were going into it just recently received a ton of rain so the river was overflowing in areas where the water usually doesn't flow to there were a ton of log jams [Music] everything back here is saturated this is insane it's like a jurassic park guys keep your eyes out we're pretty much right on top of the position right now it's pretty good deep water right here they usually could have brought a boat up here roger we're both eyes out you did mention a yep out there on that one o'clock so they should be around here somewhere that's their first driver good landing site over there oh yeah we can land i think it's gonna be pretty muddy but uh looks like they're both stuck up at the falls all right anytime that we come in for a case if we can if it's near shore we always try to land it's just a much safer regime group [Music] they were really smart about knowing that they were in a survival situation and that their primary means of getting out of there was going to be signals because they were not going to have any radio contact even by taking all their bright colored clothing and laying them out in a big x in an open area i'm sure that absolutely helped the search party from the air to the initial finding of them tail wheels on deck left on deck this is plenty solid enough for us to land on all right once i was on the ground and walking over to uh where the couple had all their survival gear the very first thing i noticed was wow these guys are set up they got a big old tent it looks like they uh were very well prepared for uh the situation that they were invited but i took everything i could big thing that goes through your head is well you know you've been out in the elements last couple days so you ask if there's any medical emergencies that need to be taken care of prior to anything else and they both said they were healthy and fine and good spirits and happy to see us [Music] so because of our weight restrictions you guys didn't take a bag like a guy back so i'd say uh pack and put stuff in your drive bag as you can [Music] put desert eagle in there i wanted to bring some firearms on board as well at which time we pilots agreed to it as long as they were unloaded and i kept them between my seat and the rescue swimmer seat [Music] [Music] we are responding to a missing skiff that's got a two people that are overdue [Music] they were both up and walking around and uh seemed to be in good spirits both had smiles on their faces [Music] we were not going to be able to take all of their gear luckily they had a big fish tote and we were able to put a lot of their gear in that fish tote secure it down pretty well and tie it to a tree and uh hopefully they'll be able to go back at a future time and grab that you guys got each [Music] the survivors were very lucky considering the situation they were in the last couple days the water levels had risen quite a bit and because they were able to start a fire and keep it warm and have a dry place to stay and keep all their their belongings and survival equipment dry really aided in their survival it's a whole other world up here in southeast alaska if you're not prepared the the outcome could be devastating [Music] if you scored away you good i'm good to go they're good to go um you know they were pretty set up and comfortable over there and i think we'll be just fine going straight to the uh airport they're doing great good spirits no medical issues whatsoever they can go to the airport and they'll get picked up there that makes our job pretty easy we're able to retrace our steps out the river back up over the power lines and direct into catch so did they stay dry throughout the ordeal it looks like they were able to get all their gear that they needed to survive off the boat and uh you know set up a camp cool with low vis not knowing where they were though we had a pretty quick transit back to station ketchikan we elected to we didn't really need any uh emergency medical personnel on scene when we landed well you guys want to under your belts and come on out [Music] there you go [Music] let's land ahead it was definitely great to be able to rescue anybody and to lend a hand to a fairly fellow retired coastie was was great too and just a good chance to hear some of his stories of different adventures he'd been on and now we were kind of able to pay him back for for some of those things that he'd done in the past how many days have you been out there we went up on the 19th it's the 24th today my name is kenneth wright this is my wife patty bishop and i did 16 years in the navy and 14 in the coast guard i spent four hours in the water trying to get out trying to get the boat off and i was just hyperthermia setting in finally we got up put tarps up we spent the night on the boat we're right underneath the falls the river is changing all the time so you have to prepare for every eventuality we had a game plan we had plenty of food with us and a tent we had to move off that sandbar because the water was great that's where we camped when we first got off and then the water kept coming up kept coming up and i said we're moving all the rainfall as you can tell just flying up the river that it's it's just overflowing right now it came up probably six feet there's a plane out actually all night looking for you guys too oh really yeah all last night and this morning looking for you guys had to go back because the weather was just down to the deck that couldn't do anything when i heard the helicopter it was great we both heard it about the same time and i looked up and i could see it coming in and when you see that orange coming at you it's like thank you lord you know thank you thank you thank you we'll be forever grateful yes as a search and rescue organization we are very well trained however there's a lot of things that are happening that are completely out of our control and it's pretty much up to the survivor to be able to take control of that situation the better prepared you are like this couple the better off you're going to be was pretty remarkable you

Channel: DangerTV

Views: 296,291

Keywords: coast guard alaska, united states coast guard alaska, us coast guard alaska, full episode of coast guard alaska, coast guard alaska season 4 episode 7, season 4 episode 7 of coast guard alaska, us coast guard, united states coast guard, alaska, danger, dangertv, danger tv, Danger, DangerTV, Danger Tv, Danger TV, coast guard rescue, lost in the water rescue, lost in the water, rescue, coast guard search & rescue, search, coast guard training, us military, military, training, us, guards

Id: SyVBfM44B_s

Length: 42min 33sec (2553 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 07 2020