KAILUA-KONA — When true disaster strikes, be it a downed airplane or ship sinking, there is a small crew who responds.
Those are the Coast Guard rescue swimmers, who are trained and expected to leap into heaving surf and scramble aboard decks awash in foam to get people out.
In Hawaii they are part of a four-member team operating from the Coast Guard’s helicopters, managing the survival gear, serving as spotters, backup hoist operators and medics.
One of those Coast Guardsmen, John Knight, talked with a West Hawaii Today reporter about his job from his post at Air Station Barber’s Point on Oahu.
Knight started his career as a rescue swimmer in North Carolina, where he was for five years. For the last two years, he’s been operating in the islands — including missions that take him out to the Big Island.
It’s Knight who actually gets into the water or onto the ship in distress and gets people out. It’s a team effort, he stresses, as he couldn’t do anything he does without his crewmates.
WHT: You apply for this. You say you want to be the guy who jumps out of helicopters in terrible conditions and attempts to get back out. That’s — you choose that, right? You go to school, it’s competitive isn’t it?
JK: It’s extremely competitive. Beforehand, there’s an 18-week/ four-month preparatory program to get you ready.
The Coast Guard says rescue swimmers “must be in superior physical shape with no chronic orthopedic problems, possess a high level of mental acuity and outstanding military bearing. Training is extremely stressful and is designed to identify those candidates who possess the physical and mental skills to handle the rigors of being a helicopter rescue swimmer.
So then the attrition rate — you’ll start with a class of 25 and two guys will make it. It’s way above 50 to 60 percent.
WHT: What helped push you through it?
JK: I picked this job to save people. But as far as the mental part of it, you have to be the kind of person who can shut your brain off and take the pain.
WHT: How do actual rescues go?
JK: Every scenario is completely different.
Basically, when we go on scene, we have a different (procedure). It depends on the survivor. If he’s injured, they’ll deploy me. Most likely I’ll be hoisted down, down, but I can free-fall as well. Which is just jumping in. I’ll swim up to the survivor and assess the situation — whether they need to be collected on a litter and we’ll go from there. Our primary rescue device is the basket. We’ll put them in the basket and then they’ll bring the survivor into the cabin (by a winch.) Then they’ll send the cable back down to pick us up.”
WHT: Are there dangers with the cable?
JK: In really rare conditions, a static charge will build up. Like if there is a lot of static, for instance in dry weather, I’ve been shocked during a medevac while making the connect. It feels like somebody hit you in the back with a baseball bat.
WHT: When you get in the water with people … what tends to be the response to when you finally make it to them?
JK: Depending on the survivor, but usually relief.
“If they’ve been in the water for 24 hours, they’ve been fighting, fighting, fighting, thinking, ‘This is it.’ Once they know (the swimmer arrives) there’s pure relief in their bodies and they’re exhausted and relieved.
WHT: But is it always relief? I know you hear about lifeguards getting pulled under. Have you ever had to deal with that?
JK: I haven’t, but that’s a whole unit of our school … You’re basically being beaten down by grown men. And you’re taught certain grappling moves to get them into escape zones. And hypothermics are often in an altered mental state, you know they don’t know what they’re doing.
WHT: How much do you really know when you arrive?
JK: It’s limited.
In medievacs especially, it’s always different than what you first expect. Because in medevacs you’re listening to a guy with no medical experience trying to explain what’s going on with these people. They have no idea if it’s heartburn or a heart attack or having a stroke, or they’ve broken a back or anything like that. So you don’t really know until you’re on the scene.
On looking for people:
JK: It’s extremely difficult. When people have a device, a strobe light, a mirror for the sun, it’s easy. That’s why we want the sea-going public to have those implements on you. A lot of our searching out on the water has whitecaps and it can be very hard. It’s very hard. The sector gives us these grids and we throw markers in the water called data marker buoys. They have stuff that shows us the drift of those buoys that shows us the general vicinity of where to search. And at night we use night vision goggles, and if needed we can search all night long, because we can see as good as daylight.
They are aided by an infrared camera mounted below the helicopter, allowing them to look all around. Their equipment is also, at times, intentionally limited.
JK: We don’t carry PFDs in the helicopter, because if we throw them out they’ll start swimming for it, and that’s the last thing we want. They’ll go under the helicopter. The rotor wash of a helicopter is extremely violent.
That’s also why we don’t just send down a basket for people to get into.
On rescues at the Big Island:
JK: The Big Island is pretty far away. Three or four times a year we’ll get ‘a person in the water, person in the water’ repeatedly. The Big Island, it’s unforgiving, obviously. It’s mostly searches for people and you’ll find them later, you know, their bodies are found. Yeah, because the time it takes us to get there by helicopter, it will already have been a couple hours.
On the movie, “The Guardian,” about two rescue swimmers in Alaska.
JK: I was actually in training when they were making it, so we got to work with Ashton Kutchner and Kevin Costner. And they kind of based the movie, you know, it’s Hollywood.
But all the rescues are based off real rescues. But, you know, A-School is way tougher than that. You’re not going to go out and have a beer with your instructor or anything like that.
