Rescue of the Bounty: Disaster and Survival in Superstorm Sandy (26 page)

Jane had grown up in Washington State and was the quintessential tomboy—climbing trees, camping, hiking, playing soccer and baseball. She had always wanted to fly but was unsure how to go about it and instead majored in history at the University of Washington in Seattle. Her longtime boyfriend, who later became her husband, joined the coast guard, and Jane began to see the opportunities. She applied to Officer Candidate School, was accepted, and graduated in 2007. In her first position, she did offshore security boardings of foreign vessels, a job she loved, but she hadn’t given up on flying and kept applying for flight school until she was finally selected. Graduating, or “winged,” in March 2010, Jane’s first air station was Elizabeth City. Now, she was about to see why the ocean off Cape Hatteras is called the Graveyard of the Atlantic.

It took about an hour to reach
Bounty
. Peyton Russell in the C-130 told Jane that he had passed over one strobe and survival suit that did not float like the others. “We’ve marked the location, and we think there might be a person in that suit.” Jane and Steve understood this was the target they needed to go to first. Unlike the large rafts, this single strobe light, far from the
Bounty
, could be easy to lose sight of in the waves. And should the strobe light’s batteries die, they might never find that potential survivor.

Steve guided the helo to the coordinates Jane relayed to him, a full three-quarters of a mile from the ship and the rafts. As they descended toward the lone strobe light, Jane got her first close-up view of the ocean—it looked crazed. “Normally,” recalled Jane, “waves would be advancing from a single direction and there would be a set amount of space between each one. These waves, however, had nothing normal about them.” They were coming from various directions, with no pattern, and oftentimes they slammed into one another, shooting spray into the dark sky. The pilots had a good view of the chaos below: besides the windows directly in front of the cockpit, small windows were at their feet and on the sides. In the cabin, Haba and Lufkin peered out small windows on either side of the aircraft, and they, too, were in awe of the unusual waves, varying in size from twenty-five to thirty feet.

Winds made hovering in place nearly impossible, and Steve did his best to hold the bird in position over the single strobe light. The crew could see the outline of the immersion suit, but there was no sign of life. To get lower, Steve let the wind blow the helo back a bit, then he angled the nose down, descending to sixty feet. Jane watched the radar altimeter, which shows exactly the distance between the aircraft and the ocean. It fluctuated between twenty-five and sixty feet, meaning that when a large wave passed beneath the helicopter, it was only twenty-five feet from them. Jane wanted to make sure they never got any closer than twenty-five feet, so she focused on scanning the seas to make sure no extreme or “rogue” waves were coming their way. Even if the wave itself didn’t hit the helicopter, its spray could be ingested by the engine and cause flameout. If that happened, the Jayhawk would stall and drop like a stone. When it hit the water, it would turn turtle as the heavy rotors, extending fifty-four feet in diameter, pulled the helicopter upside down. The crew trained for this dire scenario, but successfully exiting the aircraft at night in thirty-foot seas would be a long shot. With that in mind, Jane kept her eyes peeled for an extreme wave that could kill them all.

Michael Lufkin removed his goggles in preparation for a possible hoist. Suddenly, over his headset, he heard Steve say, “I just saw the arm of the survival suit lift out of the water! We’ve got a person down there.” A shot of adrenaline coursed through Lufkin, and he looked at Haba. They were officially out of search mode and into a rescue.

Randy Haba had taken off his helmet with the radio set and exchanged it for a neon-green rescue helmet. Now he was donning his harness, flippers, mask, and snorkel, a determined look on his face. The rescue swimmer wore a dry suit that he knew would make him sweat profusely in the warmer waters of the Gulf Stream, but he was not complaining. Should disaster happen and he couldn’t get back into the helicopter, the extra layer of protection against hypothermia might save his life.

He slid toward the open doorway. With the illumination from the helicopter’s searchlight, he could see the person’s head and arm sticking out of the ocean. Earlier Randy had used the aircraft’s infared camera, which could help in the search for survivors by showing a person’s body heat as white against a green background on the monitor. The lens of the camera was mounted in the nose of the helicopter, and Randy used a toggle to move it, while zooming in and out, to adjust the focus. He had seen a bit of white coming from the survival suit, figured someone alive was in it, and prepared for deployment. Wanting to do the hoist as quickly as possible, he told Lufkin he thought a direct deployment—in which the swimmer stays on the hook and brings the survivor up with him in a sling—would be the way to go.

Randy felt excited and tense, the same kind of feeling that builds in an athlete before the start of a big game. He always thought that if the day ever came when he didn’t get that amped-up feeling before a rescue, he should resign as a rescue swimmer. Complacency made for mistakes.

Haba, at thirty-three, was a powerful, muscular man, standing at six feet one inch and weighing close to two hundred pounds. Like all rescue swimmers he was paid to stay in top shape. His background would not, however, suggest his career path. The first few years of his life were spent on the family farm in Nebraska, then later he lived in the farming town of Stratton, Colorado. He loved sports, especially football, and his high school team won numerous state titles. But he was not on the swim team, nor was he an especially strong swimmer.

Besides football, Randy’s other passion was the outdoors—fishing, hiking, skiing, hunting, and anything else that took him into the mountains. A high school science teacher introduced him to the possibility of a career in the outdoors, particularly search and rescue. In college, Randy tried to get into a mountain search-and-rescue program at Western State College in Gunnison, Colorado. During his freshman year, however, his classes were the general required courses, and he grew disinterested and a bit financially strapped because he was paying for college himself without the aid of a scholarship. When he learned that one of the missions of the coast guard was search and rescue, he talked to a recruiter at the end of his freshman year. The recruiter showed him a helicopter rescue-swimmer video, and Randy was hooked—despite having never seen an ocean.

During coast guard boot camp Randy became up close and personal with the ocean when his company commander marched his squad into it. After he survived boot camp, his first assignment, like that of most who join the coast guard, was on a cutter, in Randy’s case the 378-foot
Midgett
. One of his more memorable deployments was to the Persian Gulf as part of the US Navy
Constellation
battle group. His next base was in New Orleans, where, in 1999, he began training to become an aviation survival technician (AST) (rescue swimmer) and “doggy-paddled” his first five-hundred-yard swim. Despite not being as quick a swimmer as some of the other candidates, he was determined and completed the four-month program. Then it was on to Air Station Elizabeth City for the more grueling AST “A” School, where he quickly became a stronger swimmer. About half the trainees washed out of the program, but the football player in Randy wouldn’t consider quitting, and he pushed himself both physically and mentally in ways he never had before. Instructors pressed the recruits to their limits and beyond, knowing that it was safer for a recruit to crack under stress in a pool than alone in the open ocean. Randy rose to the challenge.

After graduating he was transferred back to New Orleans and flew on over 150 SAR missions during the next four years and even received the Air Medal during a tropical storm when he was left on a shrimp boat for fifteen hours. A stint in Puerto Rico followed, then it was back to Elizabeth City, where he became a rescue swimmer instructor. Now it was Randy who was sizing up candidates, and he knew the best swimmers were not necessarily the fastest ones, but those who were the most committed and showed it through endurance and dedication.

After instructing for a couple of years, Randy was picked for a program that allowed him to go to college full-time to earn a bachelor of aeronautical science degree, and he also got married. In the beginning of 2010 he was sent back to Elizabeth City and shortly thereafter became a father. The coast guard life had been good to Haba, and now he was going to earn his pay by putting his life on the line for total strangers.

•  •  •  

Crouched by the open cabin doorway of the Jayhawk, Randy squinted through the windblown rain and looked down to where the helicopter’s spotlight illuminated the survivor being shoved around by the waves. The rescue swimmer attempted to get a feel for the way the waves were washing under the survivor and realized these were some of the most confused seas he’d ever seen. He suspected there was a strong current from the Gulf Stream, and he mentally prepared himself to fight both that and the towering seas.

The roar from the wind mixing with that of the rotors made it nearly impossible for Haba to talk with hoist operator Michael Lufkin, but they had previously discussed how to conduct the rescue. Randy clipped the cable and the sling, or “strop,” to his harness. If the rescue went as planned, Randy would be lowered to the survivor, get him in the strop, and come up with him. Randy would wrap his legs around the survivor to ensure he or she didn’t slip out of the sling.

Lufkin, kneeling by the cabin door, wore a gunner’s belt around his waist that extended to a secure point on the opposite cabin wall to keep him from falling out the door should he slip. One leather-gloved hand gripped the cable, while the other hand held a pendant attached to a long wire cord that controlled the hoist. The cable, suspended from a steel arm extending from the airframe above the door, was composed of woven steel strands and was only about three-eighths of an inch in diameter, yet was strong enough to hoist eleven thousand pounds. The dozens of individual strands gave the cable its durability and strength, but they also presented a weakness. Individual strands had been known to break by rubbing against the aircraft or another object, and although this did not usually mean the cable would break, it could lead to fouling, or “bird-caging,” in the spool. Should the cable become stuck while the rescue swimmer was in the water, the stranded swimmer would be in as much danger as the survivors and perhaps even at greater risk if he was unable to reach the life raft.

•  •  •  

Steve positioned the aircraft in a hover just a bit aft of the survivor. The rotor wash kicked up foam and thick bands of spray, making it look as if the survivor were in the middle of a tornado.

Although the helicopter was equipped with an automatic hold feature that would keep the aircraft at a fixed distance above the sea, Steve couldn’t use it because it would send the helo rising each time a wave approached, and dropping when it passed. It would be impossible for Lufkin to do the hoist with the aircraft fluctuating any more than it already did from the wind gusts. So Steve held his altitude by looking at the horizon and continually checking his vertical speed indicator, trying to keep that as close to zero as possible.

While the commander was working the levers that controlled the helicopter’s movements, Jane continually scanned the ocean, particularly on the left side of the aircraft because no one else would be looking that way. So far no rogue waves had materialized, but every now and then she’d give an alert, such as “Larger one coming from the left,” and Steve would increase altitude slightly to keep that cushion of twenty-five feet above the tallest of waves.

In the cabin Lufkin said through the radio in his headset, “Swimmer is ready and at the door.”

Steve acknowledged and gave the okay for deployment.

Lufkin tried to stay as calm as possible, knowing he would now be doing two things at once: lowering the swimmer while telling the pilots exactly where he wanted them to move the aircraft during the deployment. His words had to be precise as the pilots would be scanning their instruments and the seas around them and would be unable to see the rescue swimmer much of the time.

Michael tapped Randy on the chest, the signal that he was ready, and the swimmer responded with a thumbs-up.

“Deploying the swimmer,” said Michael.

Randy pushed off, and Michael started lowering him, saying, “Swimmer is outside the cabin, swimmer is being lowered.”

Michael now knew just how strong the winds were. Haba went sailing aft of the aircraft, and Lufkin had to crane his neck just to keep him in sight.

Down went Randy, making contact with the water about forty feet behind the survivor. He immediately started swimming, but a wave dropped out from under him, and the cable violently jerked him back twenty feet, almost ripping his mask off. The next wave blindsided him, crashing into his back while he was in an awkward position. So much adrenaline was surging through Haba that he didn’t feel any pain despite that later X-rays revealed a compressed vertebra with a hairline fracture. In the water, he was more mad than anything else, and he cursed to himself, realizing they had lost valuable time.

Michael also cursed as he worked the cable, lifting Randy out of the water before another wave could slam into him. Over his headset he explained to the pilots what had happened and said he was repositioning the swimmer, telling them to ease the aircraft “forward, ten feet.”

Hanging at the end of the cable, Randy knew how hard it must be for Lufkin to time the descent in such conditions. The wind was so strong it felt as if the swimmer were sticking his head out of a speeding car.

“I could not wear my NVGs and do the hoist at the same time, so I had to rely on the fixed spotlight shining directly downward, which only gave me a small viewing area. Waves would appear out of the dark from different directions, and I had to make a split-second decision when to lower the swimmer again. When I saw what looked like a lull after a wave had passed, I pressed the pendant and Randy was back in the water,” recalled Michael.