Saving Sailors in the Water | Coast Guard PNW - Cape Disappointment Pacific Northwest | Full Episode

as night descends on cape disappointment in the pacific northwest the coast guard is responding to calls for help a rescue swimmer from air station astoria plunges into cold dark waters to save a mariner at his sinking vessel and boat and air crews race the setting sun to locate a swimmer who vanished in the rough surf it's getting a little bad for us we have night vigil goggles on board and we will continue the search i hope he's alive i hope that too high peaks and tumultuous waters make cape disappointment and the pacific northwest one of the most hazardous environments in north america at the heart of it all is the columbia river bar this deadly area has taken countless vessels and claimed hundreds of lives in the air and on the sea brave men and women of the u.s coast guard risk their own safety so that others may live in a place known as the graveyard of the pacific [Music] further out three there debris there got a piece of debris right there you got visual on the boat no i do not have visual on this boat fire [Music] fire nothing huh nothing big nothing big game disappointment fishing vessel charlie and carol we're taking on water here and uh trying to figure out what the heck the problem is but um i'm just barely keeping pace with the water right now i might need help over charlie and carol sector columbia river roger captain we will be out there for you report ready for taxi and second from the uh three five we are about to turn up right now on this boat taking on water lieutenant leo lake pilot age 60 here at sector columbia river there is a boat taking on water has about 400 gallons of water on board and the onboard bilge pumps aren't able to keep up ready for takeoff we're gonna grab an extra pump take that with us and hopefully save his vessel but with a boat taking on water it can happen pretty fast that the boat will sink and then we're dealing with a person with water [Music] you said the hilo let us know uh yes jeremy young i'm a operations controller sector columbia river we have a 36 foot fishing vessel 25 nautical miles off the clean river bar entrance uh dangers being that area are everything it's uh pacific ocean he's kind of the middle of nowhere then he's by himself and those two things alone are pretty dangerous then he had on taking on water so at this time we have a coast guard helo going out to him with a pump and a 47 from stage cave disappointment going out as well we'll get four foot swell it's gonna be a win that's gonna be bad let the hilo know 47 is 55 minutes out 6035 sector columbia river the 47 year round 35 minutes [Music] it was a nice clear night but it was very dark out there the moon had already set there wasn't a whole lot of contrast between where the water stopped and the sky began 6035 center columbia river sounds like the situation is getting worse i'll pour the vessel over protector from d-6035 good copy over ac3 taigansel air station story rescue swimmer it took us about uh 20 minutes to get on scene uh the ess is our infrared just pretty much just brings up any heat signatures out in the cold ocean i think i got up on the ess just the vast ocean just popped out really good the fishing vessel is definitely listing to the right side quite a bit so you know he's been taking on quite a bit of water just the short period eight foot chop was just rocking them side to side so we're definitely uh going to want to get on there and water it and help save his vessel charlie carroll charlie carroll's coast guard helicopter channel 2-2 i believe we should be right over you about now sir yeah roger that i see over there on my starboard side over would you like us to deliver a pump i'm by myself here so you gotta take a little bit of doing to accomplish that but yeah i definitely need to pop over he's definitely gonna need a hand on that boat sir he can't pull that pump in and try to do water at the same time 36-foot boats pretty big for one guy to be on by himself there's a lot to do and especially when things start going wrong so we elected to lower the rest trimmer down to help the captain out dude that thing is a mess i don't know if it'd be safe to hoist you down yet or uh or not i just look at all the outbreaking and think where in the world are we gonna hoist to this there's not a whole lot of of hoisting area especially with all the stuff that was on deck rolling around doesn't make it a real safe spot for us to put our swimmer down i see a mooring line on the port side could you climb up that yeah if he's dead in the water i can climb on board we can do an indirect pump pull that and get this thing going i recommend it to not be hoisted down to that unstable vessel because it has so much rigging and it's really small it's only 36 feet so i uh opted for harness deployment and just swim to the boat and uh climb over the back of the boat checklist complete we're ready for one hardest deployment of the swimmer i'm gonna come down to uh 40 feet first shot just back me up i don't want to get close to the intensity to it roger that sir amt3 rashad gibson flight mechanic here at sector columbia river columbia river coast guard helicopter 6-0-3-5 we're currently putting our swimmer in the water i want to get the swimmer close enough to the boat so he doesn't have to work as hard but then you have to also make sure that you're staying away from all the obstacles you know you have the mask to worry about you have all the rigging to worry about whenever you're dealing with something at night it's obviously going to complicate things the pilots don't have visual references so you have to be that much more on your game and give them good counting commands [Music] away ought to get lower to 8 foot seas honestly my mind's just getting in the water and getting on the vessel being a rescue swimmer you just swim focusing on the task at hand [Music] on board [Music] [Music] we had the captain of the boat steer a straight course for the helo to have a good reference because nighttime hoisting to a boat's probably as dangerous as you can get pilots flying at night over the water you don't have as much references to hold steady cover all you have is a boat as well as hoping to go that you can pick up a horizon in this case we did not ready for one pump delivery with trail lines to the boat and the trail on it is spotting the water and holding this guy cannot steer a straight course to save his life yeah he's coming around i'm going to follow him around jail line was going down tai was tending it the vessel started to make a right-hand turn i decided to follow the vessel around because we get all tied up in the rigging then we aren't able to to fly away if we need to he's going all the way around the vessel continued around almost a full 360 degree turn i'm trying to arrest this [Music] as we're trying to deal with that he came around underneath us i lost sight of him and uh i knew that his mass was right below us i'm just barely keeping base with the water right now there's a boat taking the water it has about 400 gallons of water on board i don't know if it'd be safe to hoist you down yet nighttime hoisting to a boat it's probably as dangerous as you can get for pilots i'm trying to arrest this spin right here come forward i see the mast kind of flash kind of underneath the helicopter and it was it was close okay take a deep breath it was a fairly significantly traumatic event seeing how close that mass came to the bottom of the helicopter and getting that up call the potential to be tied up in the rigging swimmer go ahead all right wait for you guys to reevaluate i think that's the hilo christian 663 station cape disappointment has dispatched a 47-foot motor life boat uh 232 from the 3-5 how long did you get on scene 10 minutes 1-0 over at that point i did a risk analysis they were about 10 minutes to get there so i decided that maybe transferring that risk to 47 was a better option it would be easier for them to put a pump aboard and that would significantly reduce the risk of us going back over and possibly not being as as fortunate as we were the first time where does lights go when the hilo flew off to kind of reevaluate what was going on about eight foot wave came over the starboard side and swamped the boat and then all the power just went off it just went rescue swimmer from the 3-5 the 47 is 10 minutes out they'd be a much better platform to just pass a bump over so that uh we don't have to try to do that again i said we don't got 10 minutes boat sinking now and then another eight-foot wave came over the starboard side the ladder well everything was filling up with [Applause] the water started to pitch like kind of like the titanic and then went down and it got sucked under kind of a scary moment because i couldn't see what was pulling me down i don't know if there's rigging it was probably just the undertow felt like an eternity but it's probably only a few seconds [Music] rescues after the vessel capsized then it's a completely different situation now we're dealing with uh a swimmer and a survivor in the water essentially you have the target in sight target is excited okay you can figure the hoist roger that's going out the door really the only thing going through your head is we have to pick up the survivor and the swimmer as quickly as possible because the water temperature is super cold right we saw the rescue swimmer as well as the survivor on the right hand side and on the left-hand side you can see the nose of the boat surfaced out of the water as well as debris [Music] the survivor he only had a life vest on so i'm sure he was super cold so we wanted to make him a priority obviously and taking the load [Music] out of the water on his way survivor kind of looked out of it when he first arrived in the uh the cabin survivor after we uh got the survivor situated and uh secured i just did another basket recovery of the swimmer that's going out the door it was a difficult case middle of night with no illumination and pilots getting lost target and dealing with eight foot chop and a small boat i mean it's pretty challenging for sure take the load and take it alone but uh you know all is well in the end [Music] it was surprising how fast that boat went down it just sank by the time we left scene there was just debris floating on top of the water had we not been on scene he could very well still be in that boat all right guys back there nice it's a little bit hypothermic we've got a blanket on them we're warming them up with the ets so no ems will be needed i told the captain hey sorry man i wanted to save your boat i know it's uh your livelihood but he was in good spirits you know he's like hey i get to see my family again live to see another day so he was really happy to be alive which is the cool part about the job you know if we can land the uh patty from ill walk though okay we are approximately five minutes out from landing in gmt i do this job because i love being able to turn around and seeing the people that wouldn't have survived have we not been there and it's awesome to be able to do that and to to get that reminder of why we signed up all right can i export this gentleman outside yes we're sorry we couldn't save his boats my name is craig daniel lewis i'm a commercial fisherman lifetime first time anything like this has happened it's like way crazy and then everything was in order we had like six to eight inches of water in the village i thought we had everything all wrapped up but well we took a bad wave next thing you know it was history instantly if you just as long as i have it's gonna happen you sooner or later the good news is that um i'm one of those stories that you walk away and say boat sank but you didn't die [Music] good job everyone turned out to be an interesting day feels good just knowing that you you help somebody live to see another day i mean it's it's pretty awesome save lives high fives [Music] okay coast guard sector come to your local fires requested helo for a 14 year old kid that might be it see the one on the right literally holding on she kind of climbed around to the side so she was in a washout area and unfortunately there was no way to go up down or sideways so she was just kind of holding on to a couple areas of grass [Music] tyler gansel survival technician third class air station astoria we're out here in the foothills coastal oregon it's doing joint agency training which is kind of nice change of pace you guys have the hoisting area inside the left that's got a good angle that's a pretty straight looking cliff lieutenant zac beaucheck we're working with county sheriff and cannon beach fire and rescue we are prepared for the scenario hey roger i understand we'll be uh making our approach summertime we get lots in star cases so we're doing this to make sure that they know how the best help us and so that we know how to best help them drive target sites go check the swimmer complete i think vertical surface is a little more dangerous than water rescues [Music] so much can go wrong here you know with rotor wash considerations pendulum swing on the side of a cliff all right swimmer it has positive contact lost positive contact back left tent the wind coming off this cliff face because turbulence can once i started getting close to the trees and whatnot i was like let's reevaluate this roger i want to recover them halfway up unfortunately we weren't able to get them on the first try there we had abort the hoist inside the cabinet oh it's complete i can't do it from that high we're gonna have to come down now we could lose 30 feet and then we decided yeah let's hoist from lower try it again hold got less point [Music] it was stable enough and low enough that we were able to get him on the vertical surface [Music] you got to have the perfect little balance of what they're doing the pilots and what the flight mechanic is doing to get me to the survivor and hook them up clear the cliff back and right 50s it's been great working with the local agencies it was a lot of fun i think we got a lot of good training accomplished good we got some good hoisting flying all right here we go coast guard sector columbia rural hey the local fires requested halo for 14 year old kids 14 year old stuck on the cliff that's correct that's true and if they're out here that gets real steep in that hole right there there's not a good place area is clear my name is lieutenant commander nathan goulter we received a call from detox bay fire and rescue they've got a female that's trapped on the cliff down in the vicinity of cape lookout definitely one possibly three individuals they are not in a secure location the female she's at risk for falling off so we're gonna get down there on scene as quick as we can it's not uncommon for people to get stuck sometimes folks will go out and they'll go walking on the beach go through some tide pools climb over some rocks and then before they know it the exit that was the entrance to wherever they're at has now been closed off by breaking waves and then they start to go up and they start to climb up and that maybe is easy initially but then it becomes more difficult and then they eventually reach a point where they can't go up anymore and they can't go down and then that's when they call us so you see those flashers off the nose and i don't think that might be it one top right corner two right next to each other see the one on the right and that one looks more precarious literally holding on astc joel sayers i'm the survival shop supervisor here at air station astoria the cliff that they were on was a little over 100 feet tall the water pretty much was right up against the bottom two gentlemen that were down on the lower area they weren't in as much danger but the young lady had kind of climbed around to the side had she slipped or fallen she would have fallen about 70 75 feet into the ocean coast guard sector columbia river hey the local fires requested kilo for 14 year old kids definitely one possibly three individuals they are not in a secure location the cliff that they were on was a little over 100 feet tall the water pretty much was right up against the bottom and then just around the corner there was a beach area and that's where most of the ems was located the young lady she had kind of climbed around to the side had she slipped or fallen she would have fallen about 70 75 feet into the ocean i'm actually more tempted to insert a little low and come up the lower [Music] we're dealing with a person that's in a really sticky spot on the side of a cliff did not have a foothold at all and was holding herself onto the cliff by a couple tufts of grass do you want to just short haul or to the beach where is the closest piece right it's right off the nose at 50 yards is there gonna be any type of rescue crew down there yes they're right off the nose all right i like it also the other two dudes look like they're all right but i want to make sure that we don't blow them off or put them in our spots so if it looks like it's going bad then call the wave off we'll back away some of the other considerations we have are the rotor wash from the aircraft can blow the survivor off of the cliff or blow rocks and debris down onto the survivor and dislodge them or injure them further if for some reason we lose them and they slip away from the rock we're gonna have to go right to the water [Music] okay this would be a direct deployment swimmer to a vertical surface to rescue the girl are there any questions no questions i don't want to blow rocks down on earth all right you know where the rotor was now do i need to come up a little yes sir if you can at that point it was clear to me that we were too low i'm very concerned she could fall into the water tumbling down the rocks how's that a little bit better for her yes sir let's go from here all right we're good right here sir roger right there this door is going open now for those hit closed captioning not available it was a pretty high hoist i want to say it was a little over 150 some feet going down for me being that far down any movement of the helicopter can start a pendulum situation where i start to swing back and forth dangers of that are i may knock some debris down on the survivor or i may actually hit the survivor [Music] flight mechanic did an outstanding job i was able to serve just to the right of her position all the cliffs have positive contact summer is traversing down roger once i've got feet on and i think that she can hear me then i'm gonna start to talk to her last thing we want is for them to look at us and reach for us than sliding down the face all they need to do is to stay where they are and do what we ask summer is that survivor is hooking up to the survivor very well she was actually facing the cliff i asked her she was okay uh she was she seemed to be very very upset are you ready for pickups roger summer has broke positive contact aet-1 tito sabangan as soon as i get the pickup signal i'm having the pilots back off the cliff um as easy as we can swinging clear off the cliff once we came down to a safe altitude we're starting to cruise to the beach she was very upset so you want to reassure them as you're moving uh i don't know how to describe it other than you're just having a conversation with them all the way all right we're at the edge of the shoreline survivor is about 10 feet off from the deck project survivor disconnecting we were able to come around and actually very lightly place her down on the beach we called him ems so they made their way in to help her and we were able to go back and start looking at what we were going to do with the other two folks these guys look like they're trying to make their way now why don't we illuminate it for them so illuminate their walk once we came back around the face we were able to actually shine the light they were able to see they realized that with some slow movements they could make their way down to the rock and back to the beach one guy's safe on beach so we're down to one guy on the cliff [Music] both of them were able to walk around the corner they kind of did a scoop and a jump through the water itself they're both down i'll slide forward here and land right on the beach roger and this should be a good spot before we come home i just do one more beach landing and allow the chief to go out and debrief with the first responders on seat yeah it looks like chief is walking back all right we're having a better night to cheese all right yeah she just scared it out of her mind raised before it's like maybe lifting up clear thank you very much for your help and have a pleasant play home the fire folks were happy obviously the female survivor was happy and uh we were cleared to return to base fine job jobs it was a tough spot sir you did an outstanding job it's always a team effort the coast guard is a whole is a tight knit community but aviation is even a more tight-knit community third party flying on a mission like this and helping somebody out is a great feeling and we all love it and that's probably why most of us joined the coast guard good job we stayed dry through the whole thing this time hi this is a drill uh i was calling from uh the seaview beach approach and uh i saw a boat capsized just outside the surf line here looks like five or six a boatload lieutenant scott mcgrew at coast guard station cape disappointment we are doing an annual beach rescue drill with a bunch of the pacific county agencies it has some risk inherent in the drill we're putting coast guardsmen in the water as our victims we launch on numerous persons in the water and beach rescue cases if we don't do these types of exercises if we don't coordinate our response beforehand people can die pacific county can get on scene very fast with their jet skis and in this real shallow shore break the jet skis work really well [Music] when we're sitting here out in the water you're very constrained by the dry suit you can't really freeze swim at all so we're just sitting there floating waiting to be picked up just due to the six to eight foot swell there's a lot that you don't see we can hear the jet skis coming but we can't see them you know we lost visibility of everything you feel pretty helpless and you really start to understand what some of these victims go through out on the water my hands and my face were exposed surfed about five minutes of being in the water i did start to feel cold i had a card with hypothermia symptoms on it so when beach rescue came along they'd know what my symptoms were and what my medical condition was we were really relying on the response of the south pacific county technical rescue team those guys have some good skills they're well trained but it's still a little nerve-wracking he's got your guy on a sled towing him in through the surf [Music] it's fun to be able to get in the water and kind of be on the other side see how things would go if we're the ones being rescued [Music] the drill overall i'd say was you know a success we put put six people in the water and we got six people out of the water safely [Music] anytime people go in the water and they come back out and everything went off without a hitch that's a good day [Music] all right one male 1 in the water did you say anything else 22 years old the water temperature's about 54 degrees so it increases our sense of urgency to get out there and show up before the person becomes hypothermic i see something at two o'clock it's very hard to search for someone in the water the water is tumbling you can see how someone would get pulled under [Music] washington all vessels in the area requested possible of course the coast guard my name is lieutenant commander nathan coulter i'm the assistant air operations officer at an h-60 pilot at sector columbia river when we get a call about a person in the water on the washington or oregon coasts immediately we're thinking about uh rip currents and the cold water involved so a timely response is very important i'm lieutenant leo lake one of the pilots here at sector columbia river when there's a pressure in the water that for us is kind of a critical thing the water temperature even in the summertime is about 54 degrees so it increases our sense of urgency to get out there and show up before the person becomes hypothermic or lose their ability to continue to swim all right one male 1 in the water did you say anything else 22 years old i'd like to know if there's any other assets responding roger sector 6013 are curious to know if there are any other assets responding when we were approximately five minutes out we made contact with the coast guard 25 foot response boat they were just a few miles south of scene became disappointment in 556 request updated position my name is nathan burns bm1 a station cape disappointment in the transit every second counts the conditions were definitely choppy they were a lot rougher than you like to be going faster than the 25 hang on here so it was an uncomfortable ride didn't have any information how long he'd been in the water so the sooner we can find them the higher probability that if we have to perform cpr we're going to have a good outcome with it the first in the water is [Music] firemen connor mercer station cape disappointment we went north on the long beach peninsula and we arrived to flashing lights ambulance fire trucks the beach rescue trucks pretty much everybody resourced from the peninsula itself was available and on scene so we knew we were exactly where we were supposed to be let's take some more on scene in our position right here position i'll keep the speed down go ahead and go out one more one starboard you're going forward we're just gonna make a shoreline mike zimmer mk2 station cape disappointment we got on scene probably 10 minutes after the call came in which is pretty good response time all things considered for where it's at our biggest concerns were time of day we only had so much daylight left from that point on we just started searching just running search patterns up and down the beach looks like you got some person with the white cap on the back of that jet ski right there nope got it [Music] you gotta estimated where you went in at [Music] [Music] when we arrived on scene it was uh very clear that there was a strong rip current in that vicinity the water was excessively turbid and turbulent we're looking for maybe a head bobbing an arm waving maybe a little bit of splashing i'm gonna slow down i'll start researching on the right hand side he's gonna be off the nose pretty much we immediately began a low altitude low speed almost a hover search of the area i see something bobbing at two o'clock do you see that right where that wave just went yeah it's a crab posture there's some hooks on it that's probably what you thought originally hoping it was the person's head in their hand 823 ben jacob air station astoria it's very hard to search for someone in the water the water is tumbling and you can see how someone would get pulled under you automatically think that you can see you know that white swim cap but the water is breaking so you have little white caps everywhere that you're thinking man that's a person that's a person and then it's not yeah i got a pretty good feeling that it's probably pretty close into where he went in the water got some more information as the case went along turns out he was out there with this church group's [Music] roger is there any family members that have a better update on what he was wearing or if he's able to swim or not the update that we have is he wasn't a very good swimmer roger here in the pacific northwest visitors come in they don't realize they think it's california florida beaches it's nothing like that you can be standing on a beach here for five seconds right on the water's edge and you'll be standing in a hole the undertow and the currents are so strong people just get taken out it's not something to be played with around here we're just trying to find anything we can in the water up and down the beach every which way we can go i got something in the water right off the bow i don't know what it is [Music] our alarm went off for a person in the male water a white swim cat didn't have any information how long he had been in the water so the sooner we can find them the higher probability that if we have to perform cpr we're going to have a good outcome with it 10 minutes by probably 15 at this point no sign of it i got something in the water right off the bow i saw it yeah i don't know what it is [Music] a balloon it's like a balloon [Music] cases like this where we're searching for a prolonged period of time one of the biggest challenges especially as we get into night is staying focused making sure that we're being effective in our search making sure that all of the crew is still effectively using scanning techniques it's a very chaotic environment in the surf zone and there's a lot of red herrings you know with waves and white caps and stuff like that i'm looking for a slight discoloration of the water yeah it's getting a little dark for us so we're going to call it and we're going to turn over law enforcement approximately two hours of fuel remaining so daytime is pretty much a 100 outside visual scan but at night time the swimmer uses the the forward-looking infrared to try to find those heat differences and heat signatures oh buddy where is this guy i hope he's alive i hope for that too that's about almost an hour now at this point a weak swimmer i mean it's kind of one of those tough things we want to find the person we want to discontinue the search and all go home but you feel less and less like there's going to be a favorable outcome in terms of the person surviving you know you have to get past the fact that the outcome may not change but you still need to do a hundred percent so they said uh survivability like 20 hours plus useful consciousness 15 hours plus so you can expect that it'll be a co-start asset here for the next 15 to 20 hours now 6013 sector after you finish your current search approximately one hour come back in fuel we'll look at reassess the weather at that time and reassess any developments we will have a motor lifeboat on scene working probably throughout most tonight and anticipate the next move for our air asset [Music] now you're thinking we want to bring closure to the family we want to bring closure to the other first responders the friends other people on scene all right guys so what we're doing we're going to do a shoreline search south we're going to stay safe distance off the beach but we'll be just doing a shoreline search until we get comfortable with the north jetty and then we'll be heading back here [Music] when we first got underway we all had the mentality that we're gonna go find somebody pulling out the water and go home happy as it turns out after two three four hours with the temperature of the water up here the currents that we have are so strong off the beach the rip currents um the strongest swimmer in the world would have issues with it just knowing there's nothing you can do about it just kind of kind of sucks [Music] pacific northwest not going to always give something back that's taken away right away it was definitely good that he was able to be found on the beach the next day and the family was able to have some closure we all loved our jobs but these are the days that you wish you did something else it does hurt you understand more of what you do and why we're out here and we do everything we can until there's nothing else we can do when something tragic like this happens it's it's difficult you have to kind of keep going obviously you're out here to do a job the realistic part that not every day is going to end a happy one but you got to keep pushing forward and and looking forward to the next case the next person that you can save we're going to be back out again tomorrow to make a difference to save someone's life the next time you

Channel: DangerTV

Views: 257,812

Keywords: saving sailors in the water, coast guard pnw, coast guard cape disappointment pacific northwest, coast guard cape disappointment full episode, us coast guard, us coast guard pacific northwest, united states coast guard, united states coast guard pacific northwest, danger, dangertv, danger tv, Danger, DangerTV, Danger TV, dangertv coast guard, dangertv coast guard series, coast guard rescue, rescue, coast guard swimmer, pacific northwest, astoria oregon, columbia river, cape, coast

Id: JNQu6IEHrhc

Length: 42min 33sec (2553 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 04 2020