Photo By Eric Durr | New York Air National Guard Airmen from the 103rd Rescue Squadron prepare to jump from...... read more read more
Subscribe
Gusts of wind hurled into the cabin and around the Airmen inside, as the rear ramp of the HC-130 search and rescue aircraft opened to the darkness of the Atlantic Ocean below on the night of April 24.
Members of the New York Air National Guard’s 106th Rescue Wing were preparing to jump into the sea less than 1,400 feet beneath them.
The low altitude jump was uncustomary, but necessary, because of a low cloud ceiling - and because two badly burned seamen were clinging to life aboard the ship Tamar on the ocean below.
Two sailors had already died on the vessel, a 623-foot long Slovenian-owned bulk cargo carrier, but the remaining injured men were in dire need of immediate medical treatment.
So the seven members of the wing's 103rd Rescue Squadron jumped.
“This was definitely one of our most difficult missions, recalled Major Edward “Sean” Boughal, a combat rescue officer. “There were definitely periods where things could have gone south really fast.”
On May 21st, Boughal and the other members of the wing who jumped that night, along with the aircrew who got them there, were recognized for their heroism by Slovenian President Borat Pahor.
Pahor presented the men with his country’s Medal for Merit in the Military Field during a visit to the United Nations in New York City.
The explosion and fire on the Tamar had been a major news story in Slovenian, Pahor said.
His mother, the president recalled, asked him if there was any hope for the injured crewmen. Pahor said he had replied, “Listen, if anybody, our American friends will do the job.”
April 24, 2017 started as another routine day for the 106th Rescue Wing.
103rd Rescue Squadron members Senior Airman Michael Hartman, Staff Sgt. Bryan Dalere, and Master Sgt. Jed Smith were training on confined space rescues at the Fire Department New York Training Academy. Tech. Sgt. Jordan St. Clair, another member of the 103rd, was on the range getting some “trigger time.”
Onboard the Tamar, heading from Baltimore to Gibraltar with a cargo of coal, an explosion occurred in a forward storeroom where four sailors were working. One sailor died almost immediately and three were badly burned.
Shortly before 7 a.m. the captain of the Marshall Islands-flagged vessel sent a distress call that was eventually routed to the U.S. Coast Guard’s Boston Rescue Coordination Center for action.
Coast Guard officials looked at the available emergency assets: the 106th Rescue Wing, or a Canadian Coast Guard Cutter several hours away from the Tamar with limited medical capability.
Lt. Col. Stephen “Doc” Rush, a physician assigned to the 103rd Rescue Squadron and medical director charged with determining best medical practices for all Air Force pararescuemen, argued that a 106th team could get to the vessel faster. The team could also provide more medical capabilities for the burn patients than the Canadian Coast Guardsmen.
Boughal and St. Clair started putting together the team that would jump into the Atlantic and board the Tamar.
While they worked, Hartman, Dalere and Smith got a police escort from the Fire Training Academy on Randall’s Island back to Westhampton Beach. Senior Master Sgt. Erik Blom, Major Martin Viera, and Tech Sgt. Joseph Piccoli rounded out the team from the 103rd Rescue Squadron.
Major Jeffrey Cannet had been preparing to pilot his HC-130 search and rescue aircraft crew out for a training mission that day. Now, he and his crew, along with aircraft maintainers --crew chiefs Staff Sgt. Michael Cruz and Senior Airman Hopeton Gordon-- changed gears quickly and got ready for a long-range rescue mission out to a dot in the Atlantic Ocean and back, recalled Cannet.
Cannet and co-pilot Capt William Hall, needed to fly to the scene as fast they could while having enough fuel to conduct the mission and recover the aircraft back to dry land.
For the men on his crew, there was a sense of purpose knowing they were the only hope, Cannet said. That mindset had everyone on board ready to contend with any aircraft issues or weather, to make it all happen on time, safely and in the right sequence, he said.
Rush coordinated with Peconic Bay Medical Center in Riverhead, NY, a local hospital, to get additional medical supplies needed to treat multiple men with burns over 50 to 60 percent of their bodies to the aircraft just in time for launch shortly after 1 p.m. in the afternoon.
Five hours after take-off, the navigators, Lt Col Christopher Adam and Maj Kevin Lawhon’s calculations proved correct as the HC-130 broke through the clouds to find the Tamar right where they estimated it to be.
Now it was time for the pararescuemen and combat rescue officers to save lives. A second sailor had since died onboard the Tamar, and the remaining two seamen had hours left to live if nothing was done, Boughal remembered.
The HC-130 crew dropped two Zodiac boats into the water.
The flight engineer, Master Sgt. Keith Weckerle closely monitored fuel consumption and their time on station during the drop to ensure they could reach land.
The pararescuemen and combat rescue officers, wearing dry suits, followed their boats out the back of the HC-130. Each man was wearing a flashing beacon along with red and green “chem” lights to mark their direction and location to avoid canopy collisions in the night sky.
"I definitely found a moment to pray. I (wondered), did I kiss my wife and son goodbye enough? I was like, God, if this is my time to go, I guess this is it. But please, I would really like to make an impact on these people's lives," Viera said.
The first team of four jumped about three seconds apart and then the second team of three the same.
“Collisions can be potentially fatal at that altitude,” Boughal said. “There were a couple of moments where I was thinking, ‘Where are my guys?’ because it was so dark.”
There was no time to be scared, St. Clair recalled. There was not a lot of time to get ready for hitting the water so he focused on the task at hand.
As the PJ’s inflated the Zodiacs boats in the water, the radio operator, Senior Airman William McCauley; worked together with loadmasters, Tech Sergeants. Gregory Fieberg and Jamie Bustamante to drop four bundles of medical supplies from 300 feet to the men below as the HC-130 thundered overhead.
They were so accurate with the drops that the PJ’s had to move their boats to keep from being hit by the bundles, said Viera.
Dalere took charge of boarding the Tamar and St. Clair organized the crew to use a crane on the stern of the ship to hoist supplies aboard. Each man leaped from the Zodiac boat to a rope ladder
Hartman and Smith, who was the primary medic for the mission, a traditional Guard Airman and physician assistant in civilian life, headed for the patients.
The injured crewmen were in different cabins and Smith had them moved together and created a makeshift ICU to treat them more efficiently.
The team needed to balance the available resources to treat the patients as it would be two days before they could get close enough to the Azores for an airlift from the Portuguese Search and Rescue Force, Smith said.
“When we got there we found the crewmen badly burned on their face, arms, legs and hands. The initial report was that they were conscious, talking and were mobile,’ St. Clair said. “But we knew the end state. Their lives were absolutely at risk.”
Once a full medical assessment was completed, pain management was a priority to keep the patients from needlessly suffering, said St. Clair.
The Slovenian sailor could talk a little bit and he let the Airmen know it was getting harder for him to breathe, Dalere said. The team decided it was time to secure his airway.
A tube was inserted through the sailor’s airway and he was placed on a ventilator to help keep him alive, according to Dalere.
The Airmen then took turns watching over their patients in shifts, 90 minutes on and three hours off. They performed wound debridement, a procedure in which dead tissue is removed that may inhibit the healing process. They performed escharotomies, a procedure in which incisions are made on badly burned tissue to establish blood circulation and reduce pressure on the wounds.
Several hours later, the Filipino sailor’s airway became compromised but was too swollen to allow a tube to pass. The pararescuemen had to cut a slit in the man’s throat, a procedure known as a cricothyrotomy, to pass a tube allowing him to breathe, according to St. Clair.
The medical mission extended into a third day before the vessel was close enough to the Azores for a helicopter to reach the Tamar.
The patients were prepared to be airlifted onboard the Merlin helicopter from the Portuguese Air Force’s search and rescue organization, Esquadra 751.
Before that they needed to be lowered three stories to the ship’s deck to where they could be retrieved. Dalere rigged a belay system using ropes so that the team could lower the patients to the deck and then be hoisted up to the helicopter for extract, Hartman said.
Viera, Smith and Hartman were hoisted up to the Portuguese helicopter along with the two patients so they could ensure continuity of care. The Portuguese flight doctor decided the best option was to allow the team to continue treatment based on the level of care they provided after spending 36 hours with these two men, Viera said.
“Beyond just being proud of them, they deserve to be recognized for their professionalism… it was the years of training and attention to detail, that went into the medical care they were able to provide and the level of sophistication that you see in an American burn center on a daily basis that these guys were able to pull off,” Rush said.
Nearly three hours later, the Merlin helicopter touched down in the Azores. At that point, Viera recalled, the realization dawned on him that after three days he was no longer responsible for the two injured sailors.
Ironically, according to Dalere, one of the most dangerous parts of the mission involved getting the four New York Airmen left back on the Tamar off the ship
The ship was met by a tug to take off the remaining pararescuemen and their gear. The sea state was high and the four men would need to climb down a rope ladder and then jump to the deck of the tug.
They lowered their gear down to the tugboat and at one point the waves crushed the tug against the Tamar so hard that it completely severed the rope ladder in half. That was a reminder of the grave danger at stake, Dalere said.
Dalere jumped first, followed by Blom and then St. Clair. Last, with his team all safely across, the mission commander, Boughal, made the jump.
The ability to execute this complex mission-the first long-range over ocean mission conducted by the wing in the last 10 years-was a testament to the training the 106th Rescue Wing does, said Col. Michael Bank, the wing commander.
“We are able to employ highly skilled, trained and diverse Airmen to accomplish a very complex rescue operation because we train to those high standards every day. I’m proud of the job they did," Bank said.
| Date Taken: | 06.07.2017 |
| Date Posted: | 06.08.2017 11:53 |
| Story ID: | 236857 |
| Location: | WESTHAMPTON BEACH , NEW YORK, US |
| Hometown: | WESTHAMPTON BEACH, NEW YORK, US |
| Web Views: | 603 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, 106th Airmen leap into dark Atlantic night to save lives, by Maj. Michael O'Hagan, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
