Trauma Hoist Rescue! | Coast Guard Alaska | Full Episode

[Music] in the early morning the coast guard launches on a severe trauma hoist once i made my first contact with him i knew right away that he was critical he's in a lot of pain and there are two people trying to keep his arm together when a hiker is injured on a treacherous alaskan trail a rescue swimmer is called in it came across as an individual with a broken hip with a femoral bleed you could die within minutes and over in skagway a tourist is having the worst day of his life that heart rhythm is completely different than what we were looking for see that big spike my initial assessment of the patient was he wasn't doing very good at all 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 [Music] hey it's tiffany hey where's the medevac cat look 30 miles southwest of craig 30 miles all right so you guys heard this it's a four-foot fishing vessel okay i got his arm wrapped through the hydraulics probably through the hoist or winch on board on-scene weather is about what it's like everywhere else so low ceilings low vis my name is lieutenant simon green air station sitka we just got a call in that a fisherman down south uh has had an accident somehow his arm uh and hands have been jammed into a uh pulley uh something that's crushed his arm crushed his fingers and we're responding to that case right now lieutenant damon thornton air station sitka we're gonna be hoisting a guy with severe injury off of a boat so everybody got in line for that really quickly and uh we started making our way down south so these guys look like they're tucked up into uh what are you thinking about before it comes up three different types of bleeding control i've got a backup for each one and i've got a stamp splint there's some tape and everything so looks like it won't splint it up bandage stuff down there maybe a basket picked up [Applause] and uh jerry lynn from uh coast guard helicopter 3-0 uh how do you read me sir coast guard uh and uh good morning cap two things first of all if we could get a status update on the patient how much pain he's in whether he's conscious or not roger he's in pain okay okay that's a good copy cap our current plan right now is to hoist our rescue swimmer down to you he is a professional of medical care so he'll be able to attend to the patient uh get him stabilized uh bandaged up as best as possible and then the follow-on would be a basket hoist of the patient and then we'll recover our swimmer my name is david white i'm a rescue swimmer at air station sitco when i'm going into a trauma medevac there's a definite sense of urgency you need to move with a sense of purpose because his life or his limb might be on the line and let me know when you guys are ready for a hoist brief we are just a minute or two out from your location [Music] yeah when i was able to talk with the captain he sounded exhausted he sounded very tired obviously it had been a long ordeal from the moment it took place when we showed up on scene uh the cabin had been going through a lot and it sounded uh you could tell in his voice okay captain if you guys can lower and stow any antennas put your radar to standby uh and secure any loose gear we put out about 60 knots of uh of rotor wash so we're gonna blow anything that's loose on deck off on the potential to suck it up into the rotor system we're going to uh slowly make our way over to you visibility's uh pretty reduced as our ceiling's here and uh you'll see us starting our approach in and we'll lower our rescue summer down to attend to the patient how do you copy my copy you fine sir thank you thank you for coming here now roger i think i have the vessels inside here off the nose and there's a bunch of boats down here do we have you in sight we're a white vessel we're a white vessel so when we got there we saw three or four sainters total there was a chartered fishing boat on scene because they had put their emt on the boat to help tend the guy so it took us a minute to figure out who exactly it was and make sure we had enough room to get in between all the boats we got him jerry lynn roger i think we have you guys inside dave and uh chris we'll be coming down the right side you'll get a good look here [Applause] let's stay clear of that flag and the block that we see in there i'm 82 christopher castro we get on scene and there's like a about a 15 by 15 foot platform there were a few people on there tanning into the victim i bring dave outside the cabin load check them outside [Applause] [Music] these right once i made my first contact with him i knew right away that he was critical he's in a lot of pain and that there are two people trying to hold his arm up and to keep his arm together and in order to stabilize his injury i also will need to bandage it too instead of the crew just standing around watching me work and i put them to work too cutting off pieces of tape and bandages and just doing anything i need to do and they're very willing to help i knew he could walk and he was conscious and everything so we chose the basket to get him out of there as soon as possible swimmer i'll be inside i'm going to send up a plastic bag in the basket it's the patient's fingers so be careful with that back over did you get that curse yeah sure all right dave said i'm going to put a plastic bag in the basket i'll be coming up with the patient that's the man's fingers i hadn't heard that one before and then we put a trail line down which is just a line with a weight bag on the end of it you get that on deck and now uh the folks on board are attached to the helicopter and they could guide the basket down [Music] once they get the pickup signal calm the helicopter back over the boat retrieved the basket off the boat and brought the patient up [Music] once the survivor was brought up chris sent down the bear hook he picked me right up and got him back in the cabin just fine [Music] nice job everybody really smooth yeah that was good once we all got in the helicopter and started heading back that's when i could really check his vitals my main concern was to uh keep an eye out on him for shock i didn't want him going in shock [Music] once we put dave on the boat he came over the radio and says hey we're going to be sending you guys a basket with the gentleman inside there's going to be a white bag with ice that has a gentleman's fingers in it you know the amount of shock that his body went through we just didn't know what was going to happen next coast guard helicopter [Music] and uh jared lynn from uh coast guard go ahead sir yeah you did an excellent job thank you very much okay and uh geraldine uh nice job for you and your entire crew uh we'll be heading uh back to sikka fairwinds okay yeah we know he's in good hands now again thank you very much the treatment i did on his injuries was to bandage the stubs on his fingers and once the stubs were bandaged i bandaged his exposed bone that was sticking out and then applied a splint to it all right so he had three fingers cut off and he's got his alma sticking out of his arm he has a tourniquet on but uh he's conscious he's in pain but uh he's fully conscious and he's talking and everything there's a ton of people on that boat how many guys off the charter vessel were on uh i don't know if they had him hooked up pretty good has all his fingers on ice they had a tourniquet on him the bleeding stopped so i don't want to mess with it but uh he was pretty jacked up for sure super cosplay conscious and he's hanging in there with so many severe injuries to him that i was definitely concerned that he might go into shock at any time so i just continue to talk to him and ask him questions keep him awake don't let him go to sleep gave him some water he said it was really thirsty as a crew we decided to go over some land a little bit kind of take a shortcut to get him there faster it was a little more risky but turned out to be the right decision we're ready for approach once we got on deck we taxed it in did a full shutdown with the patient on board and then the ems crew came in and offloaded the patient i'm very proud of what we do here we train for what we do and we do it well from the pilots and all the way down to the swimmer who gave the care to this gentleman that probably wouldn't have made it very far without us to be able to go out there and know that we helped somebody out it's just it's great my name is jordan joseph i live in juneau alaska and i was out commercial fishing on the saint about the gerilyn [Music] my hand got caught up with the rope and the winch and i broke my forearm bones and i lost three fingers as of that i first got help from one of my fellow fishermen that was there his name was forced he got a piece of rope and he tied it around my arm so he stopped the bleeding then emt that was on a guided boat he stopped by us and he helped control the blade and everything else [Music] when the rescue swimmer and the coast guard showed up just made me feel a whole lot better he cleaned up my cuts and he bandaged me up from there i'm grateful that the coast guard is there to risk their own lives to help other people when they're in need i still got half my fingers and everything else i'm just glad i didn't lose my whole arm i'm just grateful that they were there [Music] well good afternoon to everybody and welcome aboard the sea life discovery my name is ashley and i'm going to be your narrator throughout the tour today it's a 65 foot long semi-submersible submarine my name is chris castro i'm an avionics electrical technician here with my family we're about to go on a glass bottom boat ride here in sikka tour the harbors we have been known to bump bottom a time or two don't worry if you feel a little nudge or a bump i promise we're okay we were designed for that as you're gazing out your windows you probably see this water we like to call our emerald green water that means we are approaching our first area which is the eelgrass meadow so one of the advantages of living here in tech is being able to take my family out and do these kind of adventures you know not too many places out that you're allowed to go out and do this kind of stuff my name is shannon castro i'm married to chris castro when he told me that we were going to do this i was really excited my two and a half year old digs the water so i thought oh this will be awesome for him he can see you just as well as you can see him so you can wave to him and he'll see you and wave back my name is lieutenant mike snyder from air station sitka the way they had it set up with windows the entire way around 360 degrees um it was it was pretty awesome the kids their mouths just kind of dropped open as we went down there and saw what it looked like and then the diver at the end was was awesome i think the kids really like that part the thing about the coast guard community is we're all very close we are each other's family you know so when you have the other wives and stuff and you know them and you get to do things together with them it makes it that much more fun because you feel like you experience it with your family as well you know i think we'll remember this for a long time [Music] one right turn out lieutenant commander brooks crawford air station sitka uh we got a report that uh there was an injured hiker somewhere between harbor mountain and gavin hill harvard mountain is literally right behind cinca it's the backdrop for the town so when the alarm goes off we're thinking that given the weather today we should be able to get up there quickly and prosecute this case [Music] my name is chris palais i'm a coast guard rescue swimmer at air station sitka it came across as a individual with a broken hip with a femoral bleed a femoral bleed meaning that your femoral artery in your leg is bleeding out it's also one of your biggest arteries you could die within minutes this is serious and we need to be in the air immediately i don't see anyone along this trail so hopefully they're there uh i'm on it right now sir we got a report that there was an injured hiker somewhere between harbor mountain and gavin hill shortly before takeoff we heard that the injured person was actually the race director for the alpine adventure run and that's somebody that everybody on the aircraft knew she is a fixture in the community so we didn't want to waste any time but we certainly wanted to have a quick talk to make sure that we were following our procedures not letting the emotions get uh kind of into what we were doing i'm amazed that she fell and injured herself she's like a freaking mouth goat because the show it's good to have a partner i guess huh absolutely my name is commander chip lewin i'm the executive officer coast guard air station sikka sika mountain rescue was on scene by the time we got launched so when we took off we had a general area to go to we got up to altitude we could see the cabin and right as we got overhead we could look down and we could see the folks attending to the victim you know a few hundred yards away from where we already thought right there right down the hill from the shelter yeah if you look at that bunch of trees they're right in there it's two o'clock my name is charles dennison so once we arrived on scene the hoisting area was on a saddle between two ridges um it was only about 10 feet wide and literally vertical surface on both sides so landing was not going to be a possibility so we moved right into just putting down the swimmer and then formulating a plan for getting her off the side of the mountain the worry here was you know making sure that nobody in the transit over or back and forth slid down the mountain and injured themselves as she had done you don't realize how sheer and how steep everything is right your picture there's some fields somewhere and there's not very many fields the gear that we're looking for is pretty specific she's obviously not going to be able to walk definitely a backboard and a litter hoist up from this area uh tight areas so we're gonna need some hands to help carrier go ahead and uh get the hoist and then begin the lower step target inside low check sleepers on his way down carter is on deck and disconnecting swimmers away swimmer is okay once we put the rescue swimmer down and we lowered a litter right back down to the rescue swimmer we don't want to hang out in a hover we use a lot more power we're at a higher risk if something goes wrong with the aircraft and we also make a lot of noise so we we depart the hover in orbit which we can save fuel 3-0 and just let us know when uh when you're ready roger i make my approach to the patient i notice that there is no female bleed it's just the broken hip this is a a fracture that is extremely painful she's in a lot of pain i can hear her complaining of how much it hurts i don't see anyone moving from that spot let's get somewhere 6030 channel 21. and 3-0 from wrestling we're going to 3-0 uh how's it looking uh morphine kind of taken off the edge here uh very shortly as soon as it's taken effect we're gonna be moving her and uh and then we'll be calling you in the first thing that i talked to her about is you know how did this happen and she says that she kind of came across a bear second thought was is the bear still here and if it is uh where is it luckily that we had some people that are coming in we flush the bear away after i start doing some talking to her i feel like that she's in so much pain that we need to get her some some morphine take that pain away so that we can actually start truly working on her yeah three zero four one six larger we have the basic package we are now moving her to the uh area it's over three zero good copy all right uh unless you have any questions you can be getting hoists outside the cabin and on its way down airline is just above the ground and holding and hold my airline's going up the hill syrup be hooked in the chairline to the hoist up as i'm setting up mrs rand in the litter uh one of the big things about it is that the the litter such a big sail area that has the potential of actually spinning quite a lot around my main concern for her is just how is she doing we've done everything that we can for her up on the mountain we need to get her up and out of this place as fast as possible we just got a call for a lady that possibly broke her hip up on harbor mountain i'm gonna be super comfortable for her no it's outside the cabin is complete sir knowing that she was hurt as bad as she was once i got her in the cabin in the litter we just situated to the middle of the cabin and make sure she's secure and then we hoist chris up to the cabin over here [Music] our flight time is basically seconds my main concern for her is just position to comfort how is she doing we've done everything that we can for her up on the mountain the pain is minimized through the morphine and so now it's just for me to monitor her for any complications that she might have with morphine thank you very much sector 3-0 should be on deck air station pika in one minute she was very fortunate that it was a two-minute flight we had her in the ambulance probably about seven eight minutes after we recovered her off the mountain [Music] [Applause] when you find out that somebody that is kind of a pillar of the community is hurt you're glad that you can actually be there to help them we're just gonna pull it right off definitely had an emotional impact on me and i think on the rest of the crew as well usually when we rescue somebody we don't learn their name until we're safe on deck maybe sometimes days or weeks later but in this particular case we knew who chris duran was before we even took off so it's really nice i think for this last case or one of my last cases to be able to help somebody that i know so well my name is chris haran and i live in sitka alaska i organize the alpine adventure run we like to go over the course a couple times a year that was going to be the only weekend that charles and i would be able to go over together i was feeling so confident with my bells on and my bear maze in my fanny pack that i made this calculated decision i'm not waiting for him and so i proceeded to go into this one area and i heard cracking of branches and i heard a growl i ended up wiping out and went down those rock steps charles got to me and asked if i could move and i could not move chris came down and it really felt good that i knew that he cared i knew that all of those guys cared definitely very thankful so their presence is is really a gift [Music] i've got two very special guests in the studio with me today here on the good day show with raven radio casey aw seka the theme is a very sicka send off and my special guest mr brooks crawford hey sitka and miss caitlin crawford hi first of all thanks for having us yeah that's a really cool opportunity to do something we've never done before lieutenant commander brooks crawford and we are here in the raven radio studios kcaw and sitka alaska and our good friend jess gibson is a host of a radio show and she has asked caitlin and i to join her this morning come up with their own playlist kind of a farewell to sitka we're actually departing on the ferry in just a couple of hours and it was a neat opportunity for us to play some cool music and say goodbye to the town do you guys think you'll ever make it back to sitka i would say that's our only uh career goal in the coast guard is to come back to sitka no matter what it costs us and uh career moves yeah yeah all right now we're gonna get back into the music that the crawfords had set up for us this morning introduced the next song for us all right arla next song is a big dipper by bill the spill and anyone who's uh seen the alaska flag obviously knows that uh you've got the big dipper constellation on it and uh this song talks about that constellation in kind of an interesting way i honestly don't even know how to say how much sika means to us we don't feel like we're just at the air station in setka we really feel like we have had the opportunity to be a part of this town to be part of the community make a lot of really good friends and although we have to uh get on the ferry and leave today that's this is uh not the last time uh we'll be in this town we're gonna come back to fish come back to see our friends all right you guys it's time to wrap up the sikka send off but before that give me your love of sikka you know when i say sikka what's the thing you're going to remember the most about this town i'm going to remember the people and like how they made us feel so at home here and the sense of community and almost like a second family when our families are so far away we've really enjoyed meeting everyone we've enjoyed having a beer down at the pub and we plan to come back so yeah we'll see you soon that's a great send-off all right so their last song today to kind of send them off is to live is to fly by steve earl any special notes on that one before we play it you know the title of the song to live is to fly um that's kind of the way that uh that a lot of us feel here that are stationed here at the at the air station just uh it gets in your veins and you don't ever want to give it up i don't know how we're going to be able to leave we're trying to pretend like we're just going on vacation because we never want to leave this place it's so amazing but we're taking it one step at a time and kind of looking forward to what's next lieutenant jamie jennings air station sitka one of the helicopter pilots on duty tonight we've got a call for a gentleman in his 80s that's a passenger on one of the cruise ships going through southeast alaska he's up in skagway right now and is uh suffering up an apparent stroke so we're going to be working the details on medevac and getting him transferred to juno to a higher level of care uh yes [Music] on our way to skagway our sector lets us know that uh there's a possibility of us taking his wife the gentleman's older and so as a crew we think that it's probably best that we bring his wife just in case the worst that it happens also request to know if the ambulance is going to meet us on the ramp at skagway if you're gonna start burying all that stuff did you pull out two oxygen bottles right now now it's really important for us to have a plan at least in the back of where things go and how they go it just makes the transit so much easier and more room for the two of us to actually work on the patient as we're flying stable and considering his age it might be the last time that he didn't see him 83. once everything's situated we're just going through that mental checklist making sure that we have everything that we need and that we're all in that same mindset before we land because once the patient gets on board it's just all instinct and we're just gonna go to and get everything done and sector from uh rescue 3-0 be advised that we are on deck at the skagway we are taxing in to meet the ambulance now uh we will give you a call as soon as we are airborne and we'll meet you back on channel 23. cool you can wave them in when we got off the plane and i went to go and see if i could inspect the patient in the ambulance the patient wasn't in the ambulance so you know that was surprise number one [Music] now we will give you a call as soon as we are airborne tonight we just got called to a case of a uh uh older gentleman at stroke symptoms off of a cruise ship in skagway when we got off the plane and i went to go and see if i could inspect the patient in the ambulance the patient wasn't in the ambulance so you know that was surprise number one you don't know anything about him we're just transportation is that yeah rent a roll ah nobody called you about bringing it down here or anything unfortunately when we got there the message wasn't passed and the patient was still aboard the cruise ship the ambulance personnel the emts weren't even notified until 10 minutes before we got there that we were going to show up and medevac this patient it's really good to see you okay what are we doing how we're doing it medical center uh after we were escorted onto the the cruise ship we were directed down into the bowels of the ship which is where they keep their medical clinic and there when i first made contact with the doctor i learned that the individuals were from germany and spoke hardly any english hey sir how are you doing uh translator or do we have that's me okay so what do you know about the patient all i know is that he had a stroke today and he had a stroke or a bleed one or the other we're not sure he had a fall on friday and he's on blood thinners so he may well have a bleed but obviously he's got a fairly significant neurologic deficit with significant the speeds of facial droop weakness on his left okay and over the last hour he developed some anesthesia and also some aspiration so he's a bit of an airway risk when i first entered the clinic my initial assessment of the patient was he wasn't doing very good at all a lot of significant facial trauma he had fallen earlier in the week and now it was dealing with you know the outcomes of that fall this night what do you need to do um i have you intubated or put in lds [Music] a true doctor there to actually explain to me what was going on what he had done how it had happened it was very helpful in my understanding of what was going on at that time and what i could do you know in the long run for this individual doctor would you mind giving her just a little brief of what we're going to do with the wife um what we're going to have her wear is a life vest and anything with a beaded ring on it is your inflation uh if for some reason we have to land in the water please do not have her plate in the plane my first concerns with having the wife and especially speaking very little english was going to be that she doesn't know or understand what i'm trying to tell her for safety reasons there's small briefs that we have to tell her and let her know and especially about how wearing life vests in the planet what turned out to be a quick swap out from the ambulance the helicopter ended up being the 45 minutes of us sitting on deck waiting for the patient to be transported off the boat and to the helicopter absolutely absolutely we're gonna come in here she didn't seem anxious or nervous so it was very helpful on my end to see an individual this way probably the worst day of her life with her husband in such bad shape and now she's got to go fly in this different kind of vessel but she handled it like a champ very calm very cool and collected excuse me i understand you are airborne from sky wave this time with zero seven pob in route you know so request to know when you are approximately 15 bikes from juno over and sector 0 current eta has been at 5 5 over yeah this medevac with the amount of people that we had in the back and the the bags the wife uh her luggage the cabin was pretty cramped chris what do you need for me you doing good dude you want this open no no if he crashes we're gonna need it open quick all right that heart rhythm is completely different than what we were looking for my main concern is to get this patient connected to all of our medical equipment in the plane my biggest concern is getting him under these monitors to see how his body's doing back there guys uh we're good how are you doing jamie all right yeah but he's good to go chris uh yeah but just certainly you pass them off the better i could tell based off the physical condition of the patient and the look on the rescue swimmer's face that this is a pretty desperate situation and that we need to get this guy to a higher level of care [Music] chris what do you need from me how are you doing good dude that heart rhythm is completely different than what we were looking for we just got a call that we need to medevac a patient from skagway to juno off of a cruise ship the patient is showing stroke-like symptoms and i could tell based off the the physical condition of the patient and the look on the rescue swimmer's face that this is a pretty desperate situation for approach we're ready for approach all right so we'll offload them just the opposite that we did have that destroy the stretcher here we'll just slide them on top of it deep here and then much he's out into the ambulance that won't move her having his wife aboard in the long run really helps them it helps the patient he's got so many things going on with him that he doesn't need to worry about how's his wife going to come and see him so being able to bring him along is fantastic as we land we immediately call the ambulance crew in pass them off and then i take them into the back of the ambulance and give a quick brief of what the doctors told me what happened during the flight they understand everything we've worked together many times so we kind of speak the same language great quick high five and then it's back into the plane and ready to head home the challenges of these cases kept coming fast and hard it's just something where if you plan for everything you'll never get it right so for you to be able to just kind of roll with it and just keep an open mind just think that at the very end of this you're going to be saving somebody's life we have successfully transferred the patient to juno fire we have zero five pob now and we are rtb we all joined the coast guard to save lives and this at the end of the day it's pretty satisfying to know that we helped this gentleman out and that without us he may not have made it well nice job chris thanks for going over there and dealing with all that don't worry if it ran smoothly i wouldn't know what to do [Music] [Music] my name is babel moussat i'm from germany and my husband is oppressed mouth and we visited canada and alaska [Music] when my husband had a stroke he must go immediately in a hospital it's very serious and so i phone to the coast guard without the coast guard i don't know what we had to do i said in german i'd have been the christian and [Music] foreign [Music] have fun it's time to run how are you doing i'm doing good we thank you he's the one who got me off the mountain there you go thank you good luck thank you how are you i'm doing good i'm chris belisle i'm a coast guard rescue swimmer here at air station sitka today is the uh alpine adventure run it's an annual race that actually started as an eagle scout project and uh it's actually done by chris horan who's one we just rescued with a broken hip and she happens to be here uh cheering us all on which is pretty strong for her i'm running in the kilt today this is the official coast guard uh kilt and i'm going to represent the coast guard my name is chris haran and i'm race director for the alpine adventure run it is our 20th anniversary and it is a huge milestone for us are we ready as i look at the starting line i see there are 14 coast guard runners this year i loved seeing them they just bring a lot of excitement and energy it's a great opportunity to see everybody here in sikka it's kind of a small community running community everybody knows everybody so it's one big happy family all going for a painful run [Applause] i actually reach out to the coast guard on this run and i love having them where do you find a better fit of physically fit people is probably one of the the hardest races there are it's all straight up and straight down and it's just a it's just a thigh killer [Music] first runner here we go all right good deal one of the greatest things about this race is coming at the end of it and kind of seeing that finish line and you can hear everybody yelling and screaming and cheering good job buddy [Music] it's really cool having chris here for her to have such a major injury and really go through a complete hip replacement surgery and all the recovery that she has to do and have to actually have her here out on the race and cheering us on it's it's fantastic one-half mile dental downhill good finish now come on uh charles herrand i happen to be the husband of the race director coast guard's awesome just awesome to see that they're participating from the air rescuing those of us who are injured and participating in the run it's a real statement of a community of people who just support each other it's just great

Channel: DangerTV

Views: 228,694

Keywords: trauma hoist rescue, coast guard alaska, full episode, coast guard alaska full episode, full episode of coast guard alaska, coast guard alaska season 3, coast guard alaska season 3 episode 8, season 3 of coast guard alaska, season 3 episode 8 of coast guard alaska, danger, dangertv, danger tv, DangerTV, Danger, Danger TV, us coast guard, us coast guard alaska, united states coast guard, united states coast guard alaska, coast guard search & rescue, helicopter search and rescue, us

Id: QWhoED-15TE

Length: 42min 33sec (2553 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 22 2020