Search & Rescue

Updated story posted on September 12, 2013 at 10:23 am

The Coast Guard says they’ve completed a long-distance medevac of a freighter crewman who suffered injuries from a fall aboard the vessel.

Lt.(jg) Alaina Sagan of the Coast Guard Command Center in Juneau said that two H-60 helicopters and a C-130 aircraft participated in the day-long operation off Adak on Wednesday.

With a spare C-130 flight crew and four additional helicopter crews riding along during the trip out the Aleutian Chain, Sagan estimates that as many as fifty Coast Guardsmen were all in the air at one time.

The extra fliers were needed so that crews could swap out for rest during the long mission.

A 21-year old Italian crewman fell 75 feet from the smokestack of the freighter Cinzia d’Amato as part of an apparent suicide attempt on Tuesday. The young man reportedly suffered serious injuries, including facial lacerations, an open wrist fracture, dislocated shoulder, and possible internal injuries.

The 738-foot freighter was roughly 370 miles off Adak and on its way from Japan to San Francisco when the incident occurred. The Coast Guard had the freighter maneuver to within 140 miles of Adak so that they could send a helicopter to hoist him aboard.

Sagan says forecasted weather conditions in the area included 18-foot seas, and 40 knot winds with 50 knot gusts. In addition, the helicopters arrived on scene and performed the hoist as it was getting dark about 9 o’clock Wednesday night.

The crewman was in stable condition when he was later transferred to a commercial medevac flight in Adak.

The C-130 returned to Kodiak on Wednesday night. The H-60’s will make their way back to base on Thursday.

 

 

Original story posted on September 11, 2013 at 11:23 am

The Coast Guard is sending out two aircraft for a long-distance medevac flight to a freighter in the North Pacific after what has been described as a suicide attempt.

Petty Officer Mark Leuchte at the Coast Guard Command Center in Juneau said that five flight crews, aboard a Coast Guard C-130 aircraft and an H-60 helicopter, are heading out on Wednesday morning for what could be an all-day rescue effort. The helicopter will likely stop in Dutch Harbor for refueling before continuing on to Adak.

The crew of the 738-foot cargo ship Cinzia d’Amato reported that a 21-year old male Italian crewmember climbed to the top of the ship’s smokestack. He reportedly fell 75-feet to the deck after another crewmember tried to talk him down. Leuchte said the ship, on it’s way from Japan to San Francisco, was about 370-miles southwest of Adak when the crew reported the incident to Japanese authorities about 9 p.m. Alaska time on Tuesday.

The young crewman reportedly suffered serious injuries including facial lacerations, a broken wrist, dislocated shoulder, and possible internal injuries.

The H-60 helicopter will try to hoist the injured crewman from the deck of the freighter is it maneuvers to within 140-miles of Adak. The helicopter will then return to Adak where a commercial medevac flight service will transport the crewman to an Anchorage hospital.

Update: Sept. 24, 2013 – 6:17 a.m.

The search for Alan Foster has been called off.

Updated story on September 12, 2013 at 11:55 a.m.

Rescuers say they haven’t given up on finding a missing small plane despite poor weather that has hampered recent search efforts.

The Air Force’s Rescue Coordination Center is dispatching an Alaska Air National Guard C-130 aircraft to fly over the Malaspina Glacier area on Thursday.

A Coast Guard H-60 helicopter based in Cordova is returning to the scene.

Six Civil Air Patrol aircraft from Anchorage, Kenai, and Valdez will also search during Thursday’s break in the weather.

We’re putting a 100-percent of our search and rescue efforts into finding this downed aircraft. We have no plans of calling off the search as of right now.”

Lt. Bernie Kale, spokesman for the Alaska National Guard, said the C-130 will fly at a higher altitude and listen for any potential electronic signals or communications from the pilot.

The issue is that there is no registered ELT (Emergency Locator Transmitter) beacon associated with the aircraft. That increases the potential search area by hundreds of square miles. So, they are still searching where the last known radar contact was with the aircraft. They just have to do a wider swath of area.”

The last reported position of the single-engine Piper PA-32 was about 42 miles west of Yakutat near Malaspina Glacier. Only the pilot, identified as 47-year old Alan Foster of Eagle River, was reported on board.

 

 

Updated story on September 12, 2013 at 6:53 a.m.

From the Associated Press –

The Alaska Rescue Coordination Center says the search for an airplane missing since Monday is being hampered by bad weather and the pilot’s lack of an emergency beacon.

The search for a Piper PA-32 Cherokee piloted by Alan Foster has focused on the area around the Malaspina Glacier near Yakutat.

Foster landed Monday afternoon in Yakutat, refueled and took off for Anchorage.

The airplane was lost from radar tracking at about 4 p.m.

Searchers so far have tried to retrace Foster’s flight path.

The Anchorage Daily News reports search planes and crews are assembling near the search area.

The Rescue Coordination Center is organizing the search with the Alaska Air National Guard, the Coast Guard, Alaska State Troopers and the Civil Air Patrol.

 

 

Updated story on September 11, 2013 at 9:19 am

The search for a missing small plane is on hold as the lead agency in the effort determines the next course of action.

A single-engine Piper PA-32, en route from Yakutat to Anchorage, disappeared from radar on Monday afternoon while it was about 42 miles west of Yakutat.

A Coast Guard H-60 helicopter flew four sorties totaling about 14.3 hours of flight time on Tuesday. Coast Guard Petty Officer Mark Leuchte at the Command Center in Juneau said the chopper crew made “numerous passes all over (Malaspina) Glacier,” but nothing was found. The helicopter has returned to its temporary summer base in Cordova.

Leuchte said on Wednesday morning that they’re in a holding pattern and waiting for direction from the Air Force and the Rescue Coordination Center in Anchorage on what to do next. The Air Force had also planned to dispatch a helicopter and a fixed wing aircraft to help with the search on Tuesday.

Watchstanders at the Rescue Coordination Center declined to comment on Tuesday evening about search efforts, and public affairs officials have not returned calls seeking more information.

 

 

Updated story on September 10, 2013 at 12:19 pm

Still nothing found in the search of a small plane and its pilot missing somewhere in the Gulf of Alaska. Searchers have not even picked up any potential signals from an emergency locator transmitter.

The Air Force, the lead agency for the search, is dispatching an H-60 helicopter to look in an area about 42 miles west of Yakutat. That’s where the radar trace ended Monday afternoon for the single engine Piper PA-32 aircraft.

The pilot has been identified as 47-year old Alan Foster of Eagle River.

An Air Force C-130 aircraft and a Coast Guard H-60 helicopter started searching Monday evening.

 

 

Original story on September 10, 2013 at 6:32 am

The Air Force and the Coast Guard continue looking for a plane that went missing on Monday in the Gulf of Alaska.

The blue and white Piper PA-32 was heading from Yakutat to Merrill Field in Anchorage with one person on board.

The plane was about 42 miles west of Yakutat when it dropped off radar just after 4 o’clock Monday afternoon.

The aircraft was reported overdue about 7 p.m. by the mother of the pilot, identified as 47-year old Alan Foster of Eagle River.

Petty Officer Mark Leuchte of the Coast Guard Command Center in Juneau said an H-60 helicopter with an Air Force pararescue jumper on board did four shoreline searches between Icy Bay and Yakutat on Monday evening.

The H-60, currently based in Cordova, was forced to spend the night in Yakutat because of inclement weather.

An Air Force C-130 was expected to join the search at first light on Tuesday.

Weather in the area was described as raining, 40 knot winds, three-quarter mile visibility, and ceiling of only about 300 feet.

According to the FAA’s online registry database, the aircraft with tail number N3705W is 47 years old and is currently owned by David Pitts of Canton, Georgia.

 

 

(Editor’s note: Spelling of last name of Coast Guardsman in original story has been corrected.)

Updated story August 15, 2013 at 5:37 pm

A 71-foot tender that sank southwest of Petersburg early Wednesday morning has leaked some fuel.

During a helicopter flyover later that day, the Coast Guard spotted an oily sheen near the mouth of Duncan Canal. That’s where the Pacific Queen sank.

State officials monitoring the situation say a small amount of diesel escaped from the vessel. But they say fuel vents were secured before it sank, limiting the potential for a larger spill.

The Coast Guard says the Pacific Queen had the capacity to carry 3,000 gallons of diesel. But the skipper told officials the tanks held only 1,000 gallons.

A Department of Environmental Conservation situation report says the tender hit a rock before sinking. The skipper and two crewmembers were picked up by another fishing boat and taken to Petersburg.

An oil spill response vessel from Juneau is on the scene. DEC says it’s carrying 2,500 feet of containment boom, plus oil-skimming equipment.

The ship sank near Lung Island, about two miles east of Kah Sheets Bay, recognized as a sensitive environmental area. Officials say they’re planning for a possible larger spill.

The Coast Guard said the tender sunk in 40 fathoms of water. But state officials say the depth is unknown.

The state lists Joseph Lykken of Wrangell as the Pacific Queen’s owner. It was tendering for SeaLevel Seafoods, based in Wrangell. The company won’t comment on the sinking.

 

 

Updated story August 14, 2013 at 2:54 pm

A world-famous crabber rescued five people from a sinking seiner near Prince of Wales Island early Wednesday morning.

The Homer-based fishing vessel Time Bandit is known for its role in the “Deadliest Catch” reality TV series, which focuses on Bering Sea fisheries.

But right now, it’s in southern Southeast fishing for salmon, according to the vessel’s Facebook page.

The Time Bandit was near Dall Island, on the outer coast of southern Prince of Wales island, about 4:30 this morning. That’s when the 56-foot seiner Coral Sea ran aground.

It picked up the skipper and four crewmembers, who had gotten into a life raft.

At last report, the Coral Sea was partially underwater.

In a separate incident, the Pacific Queen sunk around midnight Tuesday near Lung Island, southwest of Petersburg and west of Wrangell.

Coast Guard spokesman Jonathan Klingenberg says the 75-foot tender’s crew asked for help after it began taking on water.

That vessel is sunk in about 40 fathoms of water. The cause of the sinking is still under investigation.”

He says the skipper and crewmembers abandoned ship and escaped in a life raft.

The Coast Guard dispatched a helicopter from Sitka. But the three on board were picked by the fishing vessel Windham Bay and taken into Petersburg.

This crew that was forced to abandon ship, they were prepared for a worse case scenario. They had a life raft that they could get on to, and they had an EPIRB which allowed them to be located in a timely manner.”

Klingenberg says the Pacific Queen had about 1,000 gallons of diesel on board. The Coral Sea had about 500.

He says the Coast Guard will monitor both sinkings for fuel leaks. So far, no sheen has been spotted.

 

 

Updated story August 14, 2013 at 12:32 pm

A Coast Guard H-60 helicopter is flying over the sites of two sinkings on Wednesday to check for any pollution.

The 75-foot tender Pacific Queen, homeported out of Wrangell, took on water and sank near Lung Island south of Petersburg early Wednesday morning. A thousand gallons of fuel were reported on board.

Later, the 56-foot seiner Coral Sea ran aground and was partially submerged off Gourd Island. That’s a small island off Dall Island in southern Southeast Alaska. Five-hundred gallons of fuel was reported on board. The Coast Guard says the Coral Sea is owned by a Sitka fisherman.

The Pacific Queen’s three crew were picked up by the fishing vessel Windham Bay while the Coral Sea’s five crew were picked by the fishing vessel Time Bandit.

Coast Guard Lieutenant Bernard Auth says the Time Bandit is the same one frequently seen on the ‘Deadliest Catch’ television show, though likely with an alternative crew.

No injuries reported among any of the eight rescued crewmembers.

 

View Sinkings in a larger map
 

Original story August 14, 2013 at 6:42 am

The Coast Guard reports that a total of eight people are safe with no reported injuries after two separate sinkings on Wednesday morning.

The first incident started just before midnight Tuesday night near Lung Island south of Petersburg when the 75-foot tender Pacific Queen reported that they were taking on water.

Three people on board donned survival suits and abandoned ship into a life raft. They were picked by another fishing vessel, the Windham Bay, and they were last reported headed into Petersburg.

The Coast Guard had dispatched an H-60 helicopter from Sitka to help with possible evacuation of the Pacific Queen’s crew.

It’s unclear what exactly happened aboard the Pacific Queen. Crew initially reported water coming into the engine room.

Coast Guard search and rescue controller Vince Grochowski says they have not had a chance to debrief the crew yet.

Approximately a thousand gallons of fuel was reported on board the Pacific Queen.

The second incident happened about 4:30 a.m. Wednesday when the 56-foot seiner Coral Sea ran aground on Gourd Island which is on the outside shore of Dall Island in southern southeast Alaska. Five people on that vessel abandoned ship into a life raft and were picked up by another nearby fishing vessel, the Time Bandit.

The Coral Sea is reportedly only partially sunk, possibly on its side.

About 500 gallons of fuel reported on board the Coral Sea.

It’s not immediately clear where both the Pacific Queen and Coral Sea are homeported.

The Coast Guard says they’ll be monitoring both sinkings on Wednesday for any possible pollution.

The number of ships through the Bering Strait grew 118 percent between 2008 and 2012, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

As nations attempt to stake claims for rich Arctic resources, the U.S. currently has little presence there.   The Coast Guard has two ice breakers capable of operating in the region.  That’s four short of the six required to fulfill the agency’s mission in both the Arctic and Antarctic.

One of those cutters, the Polar Star, is back in service after a major rebuild.

Here’s a look as part of our occasional series on Coast Guard cutters that visit Juneau.

Several staggered metal ladders aft the bridge go straight up to a perch called the Aloft Conning Station.

“We have a 360 degree view.  That allows us to pick a good way through the ice.”

Kenneth Boda is Executive Officer aboard the Coast Guard heavy ice breaker Polar Star.  It’s his third ice breaker tour.

“Typically when you are an ice breaker, you don’t want to break ice. You want to avoid ice as much as possible.  So you look for the open water leads and being up there allows you to pick the path of least resistance.”

The Aloft Con is 110 feet above waterline on  the Polar Star, under the command of Capt. George Pellissier.

“Most of the time in the ice you’re driving from there,” he explained during a recent interview when the ship stopped in Juneau after Arctic ice trials.

Pellissier will command the ship to Antarctica this winter.

The ice breaker’s primary mission there is to resupply McMurdo Station, the largest U.S. research station at the South Pole and the logistics center for other Antarctic facilities.  Pellissier said two-thirds of the job is transit time. Then there’s the ice.

“You have to break a channel through the fast ice, which is ice that’s attached to the land, and then you  have to make a channel straight enough and wide enough to get a container ship and a tanker in,” he said.

 “I’ve seen it as much as 85 miles of ice and as little as 12.”

The upcoming Antarctic trip – called the Deep Freeze mission — will be the first in recent years for a U.S. ice breaker.  The Coast Guard has had to lease Swedish and Russian ice breakers.

With only one heavy and one medium ice breaker in the Coast Guard fleet,  “there’s no bench strength,” Pellissier said.

The latest study prepared for the Coast Guard indicates the need for three medium and three heavy ice breakers to fulfill U.S. statutory duties in the polar  regions.

The Arctic poses the most immediate challenge.

The Coast Guard is responsible for law enforcement, search and rescue, security, and environmental protection where many nations want to drill, mine, fish, and tour.  The ice breakers are also scientific research platforms.  U.S.  Homeland Security predicts a million adventure tourists could visit the Arctic this year.

Other nations have government and commercial ice breakers operating in the region year around.  Commander Pellissier points to the region on a large map in his Polar Star office.

“As we come up the Bering Strait and then we head off to the west, all along the North coast of Russia, that’s already a viable route,” he said.  “And that’s where you find a large number of Russia’s ice breakers plying that route to keep it open.”

The  window is narrow now, but as the ice diminishes ships could go through the Chukchi and Beaufort seas to the Northwest Passage, linking the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

“If the ice continues to recede, which most scientists are predicting it will, then that route will also become much more viable in the future, pretty much cutting through all the small  islands up in the northern part of Canada, and then down through the Labrador Sea and down the East Coast,” Pellissier said.

The new National Security Cutters are the core of the Coast Guard fleet.  Despite their versatility,  they can’t cut ice.

“They have a very limited window of time they can operate, particularly up in the North Bering and beyond.  The ice breakers, particularly our heavy ice breakers, can stay up there year around,”  Pellissier said.

Multiple studies indicate the U.S. needs a year-round presence in the Arctic. Existing ice breaker capacity is not enough, even with additional non-ice cutters and aircraft, more operating locations and improved communication  and navigation systems.

The Arctic ice cap reached a new low in September 2012.  In just six months last year, 4.5 million square miles of Arctic Ocean ice melted, according to a report by the United Nations.

While that may be hard to imagine, the commanding officer of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Polar Star says Arctic ice was the lowest he’s ever seen in all his ice breaking trips to the region.

After three years in a Seattle shipyard and a $90 million makeover, the Coast Guard’s heavy ice breaker just returned from trials in the Beaufort Sea and made a brief stop in Juneau.

“It’s capable of breaking over 21 feet of solid ice, with an inch and a quarter thick steel hull, and a design that allows it to ride up on the ice and crush it with its weight,” said MST1 Brian Carr, at the start of a Polar Star tour.

He is one of the 150 crew members and officers aboard the rebuilt ice breaker, 115 of them making their first trip to the Arctic.

Their commanding officer has spent much of his 30 years in the Coast Guard breaking ice.

“Pretty much the most fun job on the planet.”

Captain George Pellissier started his Coast Guard career as a naval engineer on an ice breaker.

“We pretty much get to live the Discovery Channel. I mean where they send us and where we get to go, most people only get to see watching TV or reading about it in a magazine.”

That includes deployments to both the Arctic and the Antarctic.  It’s a toss-up as to which Pellissier likes best, though the trip south from the Polar Star’s Seattle home port is more diverse; such as crossing the tropics.

“Pulling an ice breaker into, say, Tahiti is always interesting,” he said.

Penguins greet the ship at the South Pole; polar bears and walrus at the North.

“Even the ice that you’re actually going through is a little bit different,” Pellissier said.

On this shakedown trip to the Arctic, the Polar Star found heavier ice than the captain anticipated.

“What we found was essentially first year ice where we went, although in the vicinity of Barrow it was all rafted together and piled on top of each other, so it was fairly tough ice,” he said.

The ship reached Barrow’s ice-choked shore on July 2nd.

“We did find that a couple weeks into the trip the ice was breaking up and receding rapidly,” he said.  “So this trip there was less ice that we encountered than I’ve seen in years past.”

The Polar Star spent most of the time in the Beaufort Sea, reaching 78 degrees north latitude, “not terribly far, but enough to find some nice good ice to play around in for a while and do all of our testing.”

The rafted ice is some of the hardest to break, a good test for the ship’s rebuilt engine, propeller and navigation systems.

The propellers are driven by a diesel-electric or gas turbine power plant.

The diesel generators are capable of 18,000 horsepower, and the three turbines, more than 75,000 horsepower. The thickness of the ice determines which system to use.

Pellissier gets a real twinkle in his eye when he talks about testing his “new” ship on the piled-up ice.

“We kind of tested the full power by nosing up to a large pressure ridge and running the turbines one at a time and just running them all the way up through the whole horse power range, which was kind of neat,” he said.

So what does it feel like when the 13,000 ton Polar Star is breaking a mound of ice?

“We are one of the few ships on the planet that intentionally runs into things. It makes a fair bit of noise and everything shakes.”

The entire ship is an ice breaker.  The trials also tested the Polar Star crew; some  fresh out of basic training.

“You’ll be going through the ice and making good progress, if you hit a pressure ridge, or a little bit of thicker ice,  all of a sudden the ship will lurch off to one side or the other with not a lot of warning for the folks.  So they learn right quick to close or latch open the doors and hold on,” he said.

Pellissier said backing up in the ice is one of the more dangerous things to do. The ship draws 31 feet; the three propellers are 16 feet in diameter and sit about 15 feet below the water line.

“You know the spinning propeller will kind of knock the pieces of ice aside. You’ll feel it; it’s what we call milling ice and it does feel like all of a sudden your ship becomes a giant blender.”

The bigger concern is the rudder, so the key, he said, is taking it slow to make sure the rudder remains centered “so that it’s going directly back into the ice and not getting knocked over to the side and potentially wedged over to the side.”

He said backing up is always a bit tense.   “You just take it nice and slow for the back and then you get a running start at the ice again.”

The newly rebuilt Polar Star is the only operating heavy ice breaker in the Coast Guard fleet.  Pellissier says the Arctic ice trials show she’s a better ice breaker now than when commissioned in 1976.

He has a list of work to be done in home port over the next four months then the ship will head south to Antarctica.

 

Check out this footage from one of the Polar Star’s early journeys to Antarctica in 1998

The U.S. Coast Guard is 223 years old.  The maritime service was created on Aug. 4, 1790 as the Revenue Cutter Service under the U.S. Department of Treasury.

Juneau is headquarters of the 17^th Coast Guard District, which includes the Arctic.

Part of Juneau’s weekend celebration included a visit by the heavy ice breaker Polar Star, on its way to its Seattle home port after conducting ice tests in the Bering Sea.

The ship has been rebuilt and is the Coast Guard’s only heavy ice breaker in operation.   The Polar Star was open to visitors on Saturday.

Polar Star Executive Officer Kenneth Boda was one of the tour guides and offered a Coast Guard history lesson without prompting.

“We were built to basically collect customs and taxes, collect tariffs of vessels coming into port.  Over the years, we absorbed the Lighthouse service and the Life Saving Service, the Bureau of Steamboat Inspections as well.  Along the way along we were part of the armed forces,” he said.

The modern Coast Guard was created in 1915 as the fifth military uniformed service.

“Our vessels are fully compatible with all the Navy standards so we can operate in conjunction with the Navy,” Boda said, “but we also have the law enforcement side, the Homeland Security side, as well.”  

Boda called the Coast Guard a unique entity of the federal government. Its presence is local, regional, national and international, from the North Pole to the South Pole.

Most coastal Alaskans are familiar with the Coast Guard missions of safety, security and stewardship.

“Saving people’s lives is one of the big responsibilities of the Coast Guard,” Boda said. “Making sure that the ships that leave port are safe, we do vessel inspections.  Making sure that foreign ships that arrive have been inspected and have cleared all the U.S. regulations before they come into U.S. ports.” 

In 2012, according to the Coast Guard website, more than 436,000 vessels and their 29 and a half-million crewmembers and passengers were screened prior to arrival in U.S. ports.

The Coast Guard is the only military organization within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.  Boda said that means it is responsible for ensuring U.S. harbors and ports are secure from any kind of threat.

“When I say threats, people think terrorist threats, but it’s not always terrorism that’s a threat, sometimes just a hazard to navigation.  For instance, a vessel that might wander out of the shipping lane and lose situational awareness.  In some other ports like Valdez, for instance, we have a vessel traffic service, you know that basically monitors ships as they come in and out and make sure everyone’s safe,” he said.

While enforcing U.S. fisheries laws is one of the most visible roles of the Coast Guard in Alaska, stewardship is protecting the oceans.

“Stewardship is environmental pollution response, so that the Coast Guard is called out to an Exxon Valdez or a Deep Water Horizon as well,” Boda said.

The Coast Guard is still investigating Royal Dutch Shell’s 2012 Alaska drilling operations after some vessels failed inspections, the oil rig Kulluk ran aground, and the company had other safety and environmental violations.

During the Polar Star’s brief stop in Juneau, KTOO had the opportunity to speak with Commanding Officer George Pellissier about its Arctic and Antarctic missions.  Check back for those stories.