You can't talk about the United States Coast Guard without talking about - BAM! -
these guys: rescue swimmers. I'm here with AST3, which is Aviation
Survival Technician Third Class, William Arrison. William, thank you so much.
Matthew, thanks for having us.
Give me a little kind of overview of what a rescue
swimmer does. I mean, everybody knows that you guys are in the helicopters, and you
kind of, they see you jumping out, but you do more than that.
For sure, so the rescue swimmer part is definitely a big part of it,
and that's always what's televised and seen on rescues.
But the more day-to-day stuff is, if we're not on duty
the one performing in the rescue as the Aviation Survival Technician, which you
mentioned, is the up-keep, maintenance, inspect of all the survival gear
equipment and all their rescue equipment that people see. So, when that stuff
needs to be used, it needs to work, you know. We don't just have a
basket or litter kind of kicked in the corner for a while and we go on a case like
this should work. Everything is on a very strict maintenance cycle, so all
this gear comes due in monthly cycles, six-month cycles and whatnot. So our shop
space here is used for the inspect and maintenance of that. So, whether we're
checking a basket out, we're load testing it up to six hundred pounds making sure
it's good to go. It's going to hold. There's no cracks in it.
We're inflating the air crew vests up, the rafts up, making sure, obviously, there's no
holes in it. A two-hour leak check, it'll go on. Make sure all the survival
and gear is good. And then that stuff can be packaged up, you know, put on the
planes for a ready helicopter, so when that helicopter goes out with a
crew, they know all their gear is good to go. And, if they're out on a regular training
flight, all of a sudden they get a call from the sector here saying, you know,
"6014, we got a report of a vessel taking on water in this position."
And then, all of a sudden, we're breaking off from our training, having a crew
discussion what's going on and heading out to that potential case.
That's really cool. So how do you guys integrate into the air crew?
So, our air crew billet, so once we kind of leave the AST part of the job,
so to speak, you know, the the maintenance stuff. And once we come on duty for our
24 hour shift along with flight mechanic that could be a AMT or a AET, and then
our pilot and co-pilot. That's a standard search and rescue crew for a 60 or 65 is
just four people. Our aircrew billet is the rescue swimmer, so we run the radios
a bit on the 60s. So, when we're talking to sector or we could be talking to
other agencies, you know, or the vessels, the pilots are kind of busy, you know,
doing their thing. They got checklists and a million buttons up front and,
obviously, making sure the aircraft's being flown safely. And they're not
putting, you know, us in danger or anything. So we're kind of running the radios back
there a bit. We also run the FLIR, the Forward-Looking Infrared Radar.
Oh cool.
So it's the camera that you kind of see. So, whenever people see videos on CNN or
wherever, and, you know, it's like the little screen of the rescue swimmer
going down or what's going on. We're kind of running that looking for searches and
whatnot. And then, obviously, we're all talking as a crew, if we do get a case of
what's going on. So the one thing we practice is called a crew resource
management. So whether we're flying with say the CO of the air station, you know,
who's in 06. They could be flying for 15, 20 plus years, and maybe you have a
brand new AST3 rescue swimmer, just graduated A school, who's been in, could
be 19 years old, you know, been in for, you know, less than two years. You know,
everyone's opinion, everyone's voice kind of matters in the cockpit, you know.
We all need to make sure we're on the on the same page, as far as what's going on
with the mission. You know, what's fuel look like?
What's the weather look like? What is our rescue plan? What device are we going to use?
So we're kind of having that big conversation together, and then, once we
decide to deploy the rescue swimmer, or the pilot in command says, "Okay, that
sounds like a good plan." You know, we're not putting the air crew at risk, we're
not putting ourselves at risk and the helo, and this seems like a good plan, you
know. We kind of go out the door, and we operate solely, so it's just us.
So, obviously, we work all together, as a crew, but then, once we get out the helicopter,
whether it's, you know, free falling out or lowering down on the
rescue hook, there to the boat or to the water, it's just us.
It's all you.
Kind of got to figure out, you know, what to do. And, you know, all of a sudden the
plan that we came up with, that might be shot all of a sudden, you know. Like the
medevac patient that we were rescuing got a call for a broken leg And then,
all of a sudden, we get there, and they got a punctured lung or something. Or, you
know, we thought we could put him in the rescue basket quick and easy.
And, all of a sudden, now they're non ambulatory. They're not able to speak, and
they can't walk. Now we need the rescue litters, so we got to package them up that way.
Well, speaking of equipment, we've actually got one of the baskets which
everybody probably recognizes. Let's talk about that a little bit.
Definitely.
Cool.
Alright, William. So this is the the basket that probably everybody knows about.
Yeah.
It's seen so many times in rescues, and that kind of thing.
Is there anything special about these guys?
So, this is just, not so much, it's pretty basic, just made out of
steel tubing. It's got some floats on here, so it can actually float in the
water. But it's a rescue basket. It's our primary rescue device. We can fit up to
600 pounds in there.
Wow.
So we could fit, you know, a mother and a father and, you
know, maybe a kid or two or something. I, myself, have gone up with a kid in this.
I've gone up with over a 100 pound pit bull in it with me. And there's pros and cons to it.
That's a tight fit.
So, it could be a little tight fit, yeah. But, if we're in a bit of a time
constraint, then packing multiple survivors eliminates doing multiple hoists. But,
as I said, if we want to go in quicker than that we have one survivor, then
we'll probably just use another rescue device, where we can go up with the
survivor, as opposed to sending this up, has to come back down
and then get us out of the water.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
So this doesn't look like much but it's not got kind of
a really cool story, because this was actually used yesterday to rescue some
survivors from a sinking small boat. And you guys just kind of kicked this
dewatering pump right outside the helicopter.
Yes, so this is our dewatering pump
that we use on our 60s, our 65s, our fixed-wing all carry them. It's one of the
survival items that we maintain as ASTs. It's just a little 4 horsepower
dewatering pump, weighs 104 pounds. It has a big orange case that it goes in, which
we can, as you said, we can kick it out the door, pull it onto a boat. If feasible,
the rescue swimmer can be on the vessel, and then it can be lowered down to that
via trail line. Once we get this open, there's a dewatering hose that will funnel
down into the area that's taking on water. We've got a discharge hose that
will funnel out onto the deck or overboard. And once we get these things
going, it can last up to four to five hours. We can bring spare gas with us at
around 140 gallons to 170 a minute. So we can usually dewater faster than what we
need it to. So we have to kind of cut it off, turn it back on. And they're a great source,
if obviously we're trying to dewater a boat with multiple survivors. Obviously,
we want to try to keep on that platform, as opposed to having everybody in the water
with us. But, if it doesn't work, then, you know, kick this thing over if the boat's
going down. We can always get another pump, you know, and try to get those
people in the helo, and...
Yeah, it's the lives that are important.
back home. Absolutely.
William, I always have to ask this question.
Yeah.
What's your hairiest mission?
Man, I've been a rescue swimmer for over six years now. This is my second
duty standing Air Station. Each area kind of presents its own challenges, different
cases. But one notable case I kind of had was actually back when I was stationed
in Air Station Atlantic City, New Jersey. And it was just after Hurricane Joaquin
had kind of passed by, and it was still pretty nasty on the water. Like 12
to 15 footers kind of confused seas. Like the winds were coming from one way.
Just looked like a washing machine out there, and we were due to take off on a normal
training flight from Air Station Atlantic City,
flying the coastline north up to New York. So we take off. We're just cruising along
the coast, regular training flight. And we come across one of the inlets,
Manasquan Inlet, and I happen to notice a jet ski on the water. There was no
vessels out in the waters, this was like November time. And, as I looked, I was like
noticed it was actually someone a few yards away from it trying to swim back on.
The copilot had noticed, and, his headset, if anyone saw that, and I was like, "Yeah, I noticed
the jet skis." "Did you see anybody?" And I go, "Yeah, there's an individual like a couple
feet away trying to swim back onto it." So the pilot at the command, he busted a
right-hand orbit to come back around, and I'm thinking it's probably just some
kids kind of toe-end surfing, you know, just messing around. By the
time we get back around in 30 seconds, they'll be back on the ski and probably
fine. So we come back around, we're in like a low hover around 50 feet, just
over the jetty. And, as we come back around, the jet ski is already washed up
on top of the rock jetty.
Whoa.
And this guy's just so on his back kind of like, you know,
easy stroking like trying to keep himself from just being blown up onto
these rocks. I mean, these rocks are almost car sized that they make to make
these jetties. So, all of a sudden, there was a case just like that in front of us.
And, you know, we're going through our checklist, you know, rescue checklist part one,
rescue checklist part two, rescue device. You know, the pilot had
mentioned, "Hey, let's do a direct deployment," where I stay on the hook get
strapped on. But I was like, you know, we're really close to this jetty. I don't
want to be in it down there any longer than I have to,
why don't we just do a physical grip, so it's where I literally just get next to the
survivor, they put me two or three feet away I hook my arms underneath, get a
good gable grip, give a little heads up, since I can't give a thumbs up.
Yeah.
Get ready to pick up, and I'm just doing that hoisting us up. Not to the helicopter,
but just above the breaking waves, and kind of just air taxi over to the beach,
put us down right on the beach, and then that was it.
No kidding.
So, yeah. The spontaneous over that case sometimes you just kind of never know.
Just kind of happened just like that.
And some pretty gnarly waves out there, so it was pretty fun for me,
maybe not for the survivor. But he turned out to be okay.
The ski, I don't know, that was probably a few grand he lost there, but...
That's what insurance is for.
Yeah, at least he was alright. But that one was probably just one of my most unique
kind of cases. Kind of how it just popped up right away.
That's cool.
We weren't getting the alarm from base, you know, going out. It was just flying
along. The chances of us coming across just at that time were just pretty,
pretty remarkable, you know.
That's awesome. Well..
Thank you for doing that, man.
Oh, no worries. Yeah, that's we're here for.
It's all work.
Yeah, just another day.
That's awesome.