http://cgvi.uscg.mil/media/main.php?g2_itemId=1466357

SAN DIEGO — A U.S. Coast Guard helicopter crew from San Diego medically evacuates a 77-year-old woman who was experiencing symptoms of a stroke aboard a cruise ship 230 miles southwest of San Diego, Nov. 26, 2011.

The woman and the ship’s nurse were hoisted to the helicopter and transported to Sector San Diego, where the woman was transferred to emergency medical personnel for further care. U.S. Coast Guard video.

For the initial press release on this medevac, follow this link: http://www.sandiego.uscgnews.com/go/doc/830/1246683/

SAN DIEGO — A U.S. Coast Guard helicopter crew from San Diego medically evacuated a 77-year-old woman aboard a cruise ship 230 miles southwest of San Diego Saturday afternoon.

The crew of the Carnival Spirit contacted the Coast Guard at 12:30 p.m., requesting a medevac for the woman who they said was experiencing symptoms of a stroke.

A Coast Guard flight surgeon was consulted, and recommended an immediate medevac.

An MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crew launched from Coast Guard Sector San Diego to perform the medevac, and a C-130 Hercules plane from Air Station Sacramento also launched to provide communications support and coordination for the case, and served as an escort for the helicopter.

Once on scene, the helicopter crew hoisted the woman and the ship’s nurse and transported them the Sector San Diego at approximately 6 p.m.

The woman was transferred to emergency medical personnel for further care.

PORTSMOUTH, Va. — Crewmembers aboard two merchant ships responded to the Coast Guard’s call for assistance to medevac a Canadian man reportedly experiencing signs of a heart attack aboard his sailboat 170 miles southwest of Bermuda, Thursday.

Watchstanders at the Coast Guard 5th District Command Center, internationally known as Rescue Coordination Center Norfolk, coordinated the rescue using the Automated Mutual–Assistance Vessel Rescue System after receiving notification from Nicole Gaudreault, an amateur radio operator from Montreal.

The wife of the man experiencing the symptoms initially called Gaudreault stating she was a nurse and believed her husband needed to be medevaced. She also said they were aboard the Argo V, a 36-foot sailboat and were en route to St. Martin.

Two AMVER vessel crews responded to the Coast Guard’s enhanced group call.

A crewmember from aboard the merchant vessel Mary Ann Hudson stated they were approximately 120 miles from the Argo V, were willing to divert and the crewmember also said they had heart medication aboard.

The crew of the Clipper Daisy also responded to the call for assistance saying they did not have heart medication but were willing to divert to the Argo V’s position to take the man aboard and transport him to Bermuda.

The wife aboard Argo V altered her course to head toward Bermuda, but was unable to continue because of strong winds and 6-foot seas.

The crew of the Clipper Daisy rendezvoused with the Argo V at approximately midnight Thursday and took the man aboard. The man is currently being transferred to Bermuda then to a local hospital.

“This case is a prime example of the outstanding coordination using various tools in the search and rescue system to include amateur radio operators, AMVER system and Rescue Coordination Center Bermuda,” said Lt. Cmdr. James Klein, chief of the Rescue Coordination Center Norfolk.

KEY WEST, Fla. — The Coast Guard assisted in the successful rescue of two missing divers about three miles off Marathon, Fla., Friday morning.

Coast Guard Sector Key West watchstanders received a notification of two missing divers from the commercial diving vessel Leisure Lee stating the divers had been missing for approximately 30 minutes.

Coast Guard Station Marathon launched a rescue boatcrew and a rescue helicopter crew was launched from Coast Guard Air Station Miami to search for the missing divers. Once the rescue boatcrew from Station Marathon was on scene, the two divers were quickly found.

The divers, a 40-year-old male and a 16-year old-male, were found with no medical concerns about one mile from where they initially entered the water. The divers said they had been fighting the current for a while and were not able to swim back to the dive boat.

The Coast Guard would like to remind boaters to keep an active watch on current weather forecasts and plan accordingly. There is a small craft advisory in effect until 10 a.m. Saturday.

MCKINLEYVILLE, Calif. – The crew of a Coast Guard MH-65 Dolphin helicopter from Air Station Humboldt Bay rescued a critically injured crew member from a 700-foot freighter 50 miles off the coast of Trinidad, Calif., Wednesday, November 23. 

Coast Guard Air Station Humboldt Bay received a radio call from the motor vessel Caribbean requesting a medevac for one of their crewmembers who was injured after being knocked down aboard the ship in rough seas.

At approximately 2 p.m. Air Station Humboldt Bay launched an MH-65 helicopter to meet the container ship 50 miles offshore where the aircrew sucessfully recovered the injured crewmember.  

The injured crewmember was taken back to the Air Station at the Arcata Airport where an ambulance was waiting for transport the him to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Eureka, Calif.

The North Coast sea can be unpredictable and dangerous. Having all the necessary emergency equipment before getting underway is the best way to stay safe.

The Coast Guard would like to re-iterate the importance of having life jackets, first aid packs, and properly operating electronics including radios and navigation systems on board.

111123-G-0000X-001 Aircrew transfers injured M/V Columbia crewmember to waiting EMS personnel

EUREKA, Calif. – The crew of a Coast Guard MH-65 Dolphin helicopter transfers an injured crewmember of the motor vessel Columbia to awaiting emergency medical personnel at Coast Guard Air Station Humboldt Bay Wednesday, November 23, 2011. The crewmember sustained injuries aboard the Columbia in rough seas and was taken off the ship by the aircrew and taken to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Eureka by emergency medical personnel. U.S. Coast Guard photo.

A woman is yelling. I can’t tell what she’s saying. It sounds like German. Restaurant patrons look uncomfortable, her dialogue frantic and indecipherable. I look at her red mini-van in the parking lot, double parked with the passenger door opened. A road map falls from an opened door to the ground. Oh my god, her husband must have had a heart attack.  

The intuition of 21-year-old Nathaniel Ryma, a fireman at Coast Guard Station Yaquina Bay, in Newport, Ore., turned out to be correct. “Everyone just stared at her. I knew something was wrong, and somebody had to act,” said Ryma. He approached and found a man in the vehicle and checked for vital signs. “He wasn’t moving. He was dead.” 

NEWPORT, Ore. – Fireman Nathaniel Ryma, a Coast Guardsman at Station Yaquina Bay, Newport, Ore., stands forward lookout on a 47 foot motor lifeboat during a first light sea assessment on Oct. 1, 2011. Coast Guardsman assess sea conditions at most major river entrances to set restrictions and better advise mariners. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Eric J. Chandler.

The man was too large to remove from the seat so Ryma climbed in and began chest compressions. There was no decision to make. He knew what needed to be done and continued CPR for more than 25 minutes. “A lady came out and began giving him breaths, and right before the police and ambulance arrived, he began gasping for air,” said Ryma.  

Response crews and vehicles arrived in a flurry of emergency lights and noise, taking over CPR and setting up for defibrillation. Ryma went back into the restaurant to await his dinner. A few minutes later the scene was as quiet as it had been before, as if nothing had happened.

The entire incident would have gone forgotten if not noticed by Sergeant Tom Simpson of the Newport Police Dept. Once the ambulance crew revived the man, Simpson returned and told Ryma that his actions had saved a life. “He was very humble and had simply stepped away when more firefighters and medics arrived, going back to his meal at a nearby restaurant,” said Simpson. Simpson later stopped by Ryma’s station and described the young fireman’s actions.    

With less than a year in service, it was the first time Ryma had administered CPR. “I felt calm. The Coast Guard has trained me to be in control of a situation and handle myself well in high stress. There were a lot of people standing around that didn’t know what to do. You can’t ever assume that someone else is going to do something,” said Ryma.

On Sept. 23, 2011, In the first year of his career, Ryma saved a man’s life. He was the pivotal force in a moment of life or death. The beginning of the first chapter of his life of service.

A few miles south, another Coast Guardsman was beginning a chapter. Chief Petty Officer Ward Halstead, a Boatswains mate and veteran surfman, held his retirement ceremony at Coast Guard Station Umpqua River, Winchester Bay, Ore. It wasn’t his final unit, but the one he had been stationed at the longest, and the community he intended to live in retirement.

REEDSPORT, Ore. - Coast Guard Chief Boatswains Mate Ward Halstead is says some parting words at his retirement ceremony held at Station Umpqua River, Ore., Sept. 30, 2011. Halstead served over 30 years in the Coast Guard, and has participated in multiple lifesaving missions off of the Pacific Northwest Coast. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Eric J. Chandler.

Halstead is a search-and-rescue icon of the Pacific Northwest. With 30 years of professional lifesaving service, he is known for his experience and light-heartedness. Halstead has been involved in countless search and rescue cases, as well as credited for training some of the best rescue personnel in his field.

Halstead and his crew rescued three crewmembers of the ocean going tug Primo Brusco after hearing a distress call at 2:24 a.m., on Dec. 30, 2002. They crossed the Umpqua River entrance bar in a 47-foot motor lifeboat with 20-foot breaking waves and 80 mph. winds, conditions on the extreme side of the vessel’s operable limitations. The tug capsized in the heavy seas. Halstead and crew searched a debris field for hours during the storm in the dark, and at dawn found three survivors in a life raft.

Years later, the charter vessel Sydney Mae attempted to cross the Umpqua River bar during inclement weather and capsized. Halstead once again got underway with a boat crew and rescued many of the passengers from the hazardous surf zone.

It isn’t only the career of Halstead that made him unique. Like Ryma, it is the impulse of taking action to help others. He spent several years in volunteer fire departments where he continued his search and rescue passion while also teaching CPR and first aid in his community. All of these things he did while balancing his Coast Guard duty.

Many coastal stations in the Pacific Northwest are located in old fishing and lumber towns. The kind of place where everybody knows everybody. Out here, if you save a life, it’s someone’s brother, someone’s husband or son, and you are probably going to run into them at the grocery store, diner and gas station.

So on Dec. 30th, Halstead departed lifesaving as his career. With the power of a will to act, the legend of Halstead will continue among the communities lining the Umpqua River, just as Ryma will likely grow in reputation as a Coast Guardsman.

A military service can take an individual and teach them many things, but a prevalence of heroes is more easily attributed to the character of those compelled to join in the first place. This good nature isn’t an eight hour a day job, it’s a life on a course. The one who acts, the one in a crowd who knows what to do and the one who is calm among chaos. For them there is no final chapter in a life of service.

MCKINLEYVILLE, Calif. — Coast Guard Group/Air Station Humboldt Bay will test its readiness and ability to continue operations during a simulated disaster scenario tomorrow.

The Continuity of Operations Plan tests the Group’s ability to re-establish and maintain normal operations in the event the base needs to relocate and evacuate personnel.  The COOP will also test the Coast Guard’s notification and accountability systems.

The Coast Guard conducts COOP exercises annually with varying levels of complexity. This year’s excercise is a full scale simulation, meaning people, helicopters and equipment will actually be moved to an offsite location at Rhonerville Airport. 

COOP is critical to testing the Coast Guard’s ability to maintain operations while evaluating its coordination and communication following a major incident or natural disaster.  The California Department of Fire and Forestry, a key player in the Humboldt County area emergency response community, will partner with the Coast Guard during this year’s drill.

“The exercise outcomes will ensure seamless inter-agency operations during a major event and enhance the ability to react swiftly to any incident,” said Cmdr. Brian Edmiston, the operations officer for the Group.

The exercise is intended to test and improve Coast Guard operations and will continue through Thursday.

Where eagles scream and dive-bomb with equal fright and delight toward a beast of prey, a breed apart dwells amid the great sky. There is down-to-earth, and there is down to earth – as in, 10,000 feet, or roughly two miles straight down to splat – flat ground. Between heaven and earth, a warrior glides with the night. All the while, like a falconer, their guardians above keep a watchful eye.

On Oct. 19, 2011, an aircrew from Coast Guard Aviation Training Center Mobile, Ala., conducted the first high altitude-low opening and high altitude-high opening joint training exercise with the A-Team. That’s right – the A-Team. No television show or video game here, though. Just the real deal in action: elite joint U.S. Armed Services training operations.

The A-Team, or Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha, trained alongside ATC Mobile and the Army’s 7th Special Forces Group for a series of HALO and HAHO joint training operations aboard an HC-144A Ocean Sentry airplane.

HALO techniques are used for missions to prevent detection of the aircraft and the jumpers. Extreme accuracy is required since the parachutes are deployed at a low altitude. Typically, the paratroopers jump at around 25,000 feet and freefall down to 3,500 feet. Plummeting at a terminal velocity of 120-125 miles per hour, parachutists can descend this distance within two minutes. HAHO techniques are used for missions that require minimal detection of the aircraft under conditions that restrict the aircraft from penetrating a certain area, such as the border of a country; HAHO is used for long-range insertion.

“For the jump exercise with the Coast Guard, we exited at 10,000 feet since personnel were not chambered or evaluated to ascend above 9,999 feet without being on supplemental oxygen,” said Chief Warrant Officer John Vergara, 7th Special Forces. “For altitudes above 10,000 feet [mean sea level], the use of oxygen is mandatory for aircrew members.”

As a critical component of the U.S. National Fleet, the Coast Guard regularly conducts defense readiness training operations alongside Department of Defense counterparts. The joint relationships evolved further with an agreement signed between the Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security in May 2008. For the military free fall infiltrations later in the training, ATC Mobile requested a waiver from Coast Guard Headquarters to allow parachute jumps from the Ocean Sentry aircraft.

Objective: Preparation for the 7th Group’s Unconventional Warfare exercise, Oct. 26-Nov. 12, 2011.

“The collaboration for jointness is the desired end state or gold standard,” said Vergara. “We usually train for two to three months in advance for such a joint exercise.”

For the daytime validation jump, Coast Guard Cmdr. David Saunders and his crew arrived at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., and took up two teams of six Green Berets and delivered them to a drop zone near Meridian, Miss. Green Berets are a trainer force that operate independently and provide premier unconventional war-fighting capabilities to help host nations defend themselves.

At 10,000 feet, the Coast Guard loadmaster, in close coordination with two Army jumpmasters, lowered the ramp. The paratroopers, each with altimeter gauges the size of night-stand alarm clocks on their wrists, approached the edge of the airplane. Just a few feet from the edge and abreast with the clouds, the wind tunnel’s gusts mustered the hairs on the back of the neck into formation high atop taut goose bumps.

When the jumpmaster spotted the drop zone at an Eglin test site, they gave the thumbs up. Each of the six jumped one after another.

Geronimo!

When each paratrooper reached the optimal height of 6,000 feet, they pulled their chute and descended to the drop zone.

Then, on Oct. 25-26, the ATC Mobile crew staged at an airfield in Alexandria, La., and conducted aircraft familiarization and load training with the Special Forces jumpers.

“The training helped refine our procedures and terminology prior to conducting two planned night events in support of the Army’s 7th Special Forces Group exercise,” said Saunders, pilot for the first parachute operations aboard an HC-144.

For the military freefall infiltrations later in the training, the Special Forces jumped at night, while carrying about 150 pounds of gear and weapons.

“The additional gear doesn’t increase descent unless the jumper positions his body into a head-down configuration,” said Vergara. “Basically, the combined weight of the parachutist, parachute and equipment cannot exceed 360 pounds.”

On both nights, the Ocean Sentry aircrew picked up 12-man teams from Alexandria, La., and transported them to drop zones in the vicinity of Foley, Ala. As they landed, the 144 crew tracked the location of the “operators,” as the Green Berets landed on a blacked-out drop zone. The Ocean Sentry airplane was an ideal platform for the operation.

As a medium surveillance aircraft, it features a mission system pallet that controls communication and sensor systems such as forward-looking infrared, or FLIR. The FLIR enabled the 144 crew to monitor the movements of the insurgents and transmit real-time imagery to operational commanders.

“The versatility and use of the HC-144 as a multi-mission platform is one our greatest strengths,” Saunders said. “This joint training exercise helped maintain proficiency and expanded our crew’s skill sets to prepare them to adapt to a variety of missions on short notice.”

The infiltration of the two A-Teams set the stage for the unconventional warfare exercise that took place between Oct. 27-Nov. 12, 2011. Throughout the training, the Coast Guard garnered the close cooperation and interagency operability with another branch of the Department of Defense.

Across the spectrum, high up, where all is black, white, red and sky blue, Coast Guardsmen and Green Berets stockpiled honor, courage and clarity. For them there is no middle ground. A rarer sense of honor, perhaps, are, vigilant sentinels aiding the defense of a nation under the cloak of night. For the reverence of that nation, their redoubt envelops a purple halo.

CLEARWATER, Fla. — The Coast Guard rescued four overdue Naples fishermen near Marco Island, Fla., Monday.

Search and rescue coordinators at Coast Guard Sector St. Petersburg, Fla., were notified Monday at midnight by family members of four men who did not return as scheduled from a fishing trip.

According to the report, the men departed Sunday morning from Caxambas Pass boat ramp for a fishing trip 28 miles west of Marco Island aboard a 22-foot fishing boat. They were expected to return Sunday at 6 p.m.

Search and rescue coordinators launched surface and air assets to assist in the search. Crews from Customs and Border Protections and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission also assisted in the search.

The four men were spotted about 8 a.m. Monday by a Coast Guard Air Station Miami HC-144 Ocean Sentry aircrew. They were clinging to the hull of their capsized vessel and waving in distress 24 miles west of Marco Island near an Air Force Tower.

A boatcrew from Coast Guard Station Fort Myers Beach, Fla., arrived on scene at approximately 8:45 a.m., located the four boaters, pulled them from the water and transported them to Caxambas Pass boat ramp. No injuries were reported.

“After a brief interview with the fishermen, it was determined their vessel capsized about 9:30 a.m., just three hours into their trip,” said Chief Petty Officer Harold Leboeuf, a search and rescue coordinator at Sector St. Petersburg. “This could have been much worse; the use of an Emergency Positioning-Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB) or at the very least, a Personal Locator Beacon (PLB), could have limited the time these four spent in the water.”   

The Coast Guard reminds all boaters that in the event of a maritime emergency, the use of a float plan, VHF radio, life jackets and EPIRBs are critical to ensuring a swift rescue. For information on boating safety, please visit http://www.safeboatingcampaign.com.