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"LET'S GET AS MANY AS WE CAN!" Coast Guard aircraft, cutters, and small boat crews work to save more than 90 Dominican migrants off Puerto Rico's north coast By PA1 Anastasia Burns, Seventh District Public Affairs Photos by Dennis L. Jones/EL VOCERO, not for distribution without permission. SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO - As the crew of the patrolling Falcon jet from Air Station Corpus Christi, Texas, looked down at the narrow vessel slowly making its way toward the Puerto Rican coast, the yola’s passengers waved cheerfully at the Coast Guardsmen tracking their voyage.
The nightmare began as wave after wave began crashing over the stern of the yola, washing migrants overboard and swamping the boat. The vessel’s bow scraped the rocky coral reef below, and the eight-foot waves tilted the swamped yola sideways by 90 degrees. More than three-quarters of the terrified Dominican Republic migrants aboard spilled out into the turbulent coastal whitewater, screaming and flailing in the churning surf. The Falcon crew was stunned. “The first two or three seconds after [the accident] were so surreal; we just looked at each other, like, ‘did that just happen?’” said Lt. Lahcen Armstrong, aircraft commander of the Falcon jet.Armstrong and his crew knew they had to act fast. Working with less than 20 minutes left of fuel, they rigged a deployable raft “in record time,” according to Armstrong, slowed their pace and flew as low as they could: 200 feet above the water. Moving at more than 150 miles per hour and unable to safely maneuver any slower, the Falcon crew expertly dropped the life raft a safe but close thirty feet upwind of the mass of frightened migrants, and many of them clambered inside, submerging the raft. “There was really not much time to think and look at the big picture of how difficult it was going to be, and we fell back on training,” Armstrong said. “We were truly blessed to have been there and for everything to work out like it did that day.” The sun had just risen on the Puerto Rican city of Vega Alta, but less than a hundred yards offshore, the unforgiving seas had already begun swallowing up migrants. Less than 20 minutes after the accident, the first of more than a dozen assets began arriving on scene, including the 110-foot patrol boats Chincoteague and Key Largo, and four rescue boats from Station San Juan. "Two of my boats were dispatched by the operations center in Sector San Juan, then two more with additional equipment,” said Senior Chief Peter Desillier, Officer-in-Charge of Station San Juan. “When you’ve got 80 migrants in the water, no one’s got that many lifejackets on board.” Three helicopters left from Air Station Borinquen, one right after another. Thirty-year-old rescue swimmer Petty Officer 3rd Class Pepe Carire was on board one of the helicopters when it arrived at the half-sunken, 40-foot yola marking the scene of the accident. The picture before his eyes was jarring. “I looked down and said, ‘Whoa, there’s a lot of people,’ and I thought, ‘alright, let’s go, let’s start this; let’s get as many as we can,” said Carire. “You have to push all the negativity out of your head and just get in there and get the job done.” Aircraft commander Lt. Jim Reid and Lt. Kevin Wilson maneuvered the CG6553 Dolphin helicopter, synchronizing rescues with the two other helicopters in the tight air space. “There were people and bodies all over, so we had to decide who to pick up first,” said Reid. The seamless crew coordination was vital to timely success, as decisions by the rescue swimmer of who to pick up next were relayed via hand signals to the flight mechanic, who passed it to the pilot. Reid and Wilson worked so closely alongside the two other helicopters that the CG6553 was in the rotor wash from the other aircraft, which were less than 100 yards away. The men ferried 13 migrants to the beach in 50 minutes before departing for fuel.
Carire and two other rescue swimmers dangled a constant 75 feet below the helicopter from cables like shark bait above the ocean as they were lowered again and again to the frightened migrants below . The yola began to break up as the waves smashed it against the rocks on shore.Petty Officer 2nd Class Eric Bednorz, a seasoned rescue swimmer from Air Station Borinquen, wished the helicopter pilots could move him quicker so he could rescue more people, although the crew was already averaging one person every three to four minutes. He said, “I couldn’t go fast enough; they raised me back up [to the helicopter] once, and I told them, “Go faster, go faster!” Panicked and exhausted migrants clung to gas cans, pieces of wood and debris from the yola and a second life raft deployed from one of the helicopters. Women clung to men, and in the chaos, a few people were pushed or kicked underwater as others tried to stay afloat. Rescue swimmers were careful not to tarry long in the water. “I tried to get away from people so more wouldn’t grab onto me,” said Bednorz. “The longer you were in the water, the more people would rush me. [One migrant] grabbed onto the lady I was trying to hoist, and I had to squeeze her wrist by the pressure point to make her let go.”
Crewmembers from the Chincoteague’s small boat began pulling migrants from the water. One woman was brought to the Chincoteague by a Forces United for Rapid Action (Puerto Rican police) officer who found her under the water. She was unconscious, unresponsive without a pulse and her eyes were open. Chincoteague crewman Petty Officer 1st Class Joshua A. Mann began doing CPR. “Everything happened so fast, and [my] training just kicked in. In that situation, everyone has a job to do, so you just focus on that,” said Mann. “Given the circumstances, it’s amazing that many people survived.”
Crews continued to do what they could to help the Dominicans who were being pounded by the surf. The rescue swimmers were swung from ocean to shore with legs powerfully wrapped around migrants. They were able to work faster using a new “body-grab” technique developed at Air Station Borinquen especially for hoists during a mass migrant rescue. This procedure allowed the rescue swimmers to grab migrants and safely transport them without the use of a safety harness. In this situation, the time saved meant lives saved. On shore, live television cameras rolled, showing the rescue swimmer/migrant pairs being quickly lowered to the rocks on shore. Thousands witnessed the rescues, glued to their screens as aid workers ran up to support the weak and exhausted survivors. “People were going in and out of consciousness, I went to the older ladies that I could tell were barely hanging on first. Some were conscious; others, when I’d grab them, they’d go limp. One [migrant] went unconscious right as I grabbed him,” said Bednorz. “When I’d lay them on the beach, I’d get them to at least open their eyes before I left them to go for another one.” “One passed out in my arms as we were being ferried to the beach, so I started chest compressions while on the hook to get the water out of her lungs,” said Carire. He said he had left her with aid workers, but by the time he got back to the beach with another migrant, she was laying alone and the aid workers had moved onto others who were still alive. “It was hard leaving her there, but we had to save as many as we could,” Carire said, who had just graduated rescue swimmer A-school in June. This was his first case hoisting people in distress. One helicopter crew did more than 19 hoists in four hours. The aggregate for the three Coast Guard helicopters was 35 rescues. Personal watercraft and rescue boats from FURA assisted at the scene, as well as a Blackhawk helicopter from Customs and Border Protection. Cameras transmitted images of dozens of migrants floating next to a FURA watercraft, the officer in the water, offering his craft as another device for the migrants to cling to. Systematically, each of the migrants was recovered and transported to safety. The CG6553 hovered over the scene, recently returned from refueling. Over the radios, they could hear that one migrant was still missing, and that FURA officers were still searching for him. The crew of the Chinco 1, Chincoteague’s small boat, tried to recover the migrant, but could not reach him with a five-foot boat hook. Three divers from FURA ventured into the breaking surfline in a small boat for a second attempt, but eventually capsized in the crashing waves. A second FURA rescue boat followed them into the surf, and four of the five people on board dove into the water to rescue their fellow officers. A Coast Guard small boat recovered three of the seven FURA officers in the water, and Bednorz recovered and hoisted the last four; one had heart complications, another had a broken arm. He was released back into the water for the body of the last migrant the FURA officers had been looking for. Bednorz dove down and kicked through the murky depths until he found the migrant floating more than five feet below the surface. The 28-year-old rescue swimmer latched onto the body, surfaced and signaled to the helicopter for a pick up. “I didn’t look at his face; I was still going off adrenaline from the first 17 rescues,” said Bednorz. Shore side support also came en masse from Customs and Border Protection agents who had been in pursuit of the yola from land since the initial reports. Station San Juan personnel relayed communications to the vessels offshore and assisted where they could with the migrants who washed up on the rocky coral-littered beaches. Also, more than 40 agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement worked with FURA agents, the Puerto Rico Emergency Management Agency, and local emergency service personnel to help and account for all of the migrants. “I emptied three offices of agents for this case,” said ICE Assistant Special-Agent-in-Charge Lydia St. John. “I sent every agent I had to the scene.” According to reports from survivors, there had been more than 90 Dominican migrants on board the yola before the crash. An exact number could not be determined. Of the 92 migrants recovered, the total number rescued was 84 (50 male and 34 females). Tragically, eight migrants lost their lives (two men and six women) during the illegal attempt to enter the U.S. The search for possible survivors was suspended at sunset, 10 hours after the accident. "It’s a real tragedy that so many people lost their lives, but we have to count our blessings," said Capt. Charles Ray, commander of Air Station Borinquen. “That the Falcon crew was able to get that raft on target, I’m sure that saved at least 30 lives. If [the crews] couldn’t make decisions on their feet like they did, there wouldn’t be as many people who made it.” Ray admits that the real secret to preventing accidents like this is the prevention patrols offshore by Department of Homeland Security assets, but if it happens again, his crews will be ready to perform their amazing rescues. “We practice and train every day, but almost a hundred people in breaking surf? You can’t train for that.” -uscg- |
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