A Salute To Our Military (+ Open Thread)
By SusanUnPC on December 10, 2007 at 8:53 PM in Soldiers/Veterans
Last week, you probably saw brief videos on CNN or MSNBC of storm-ravaged, flooded Western Washington towns and farms. But there haven’t been many reports about the military’s role in rescuing people and their pets, in the most risky, dark, rain-soaked conditions with terrain obliterated by the flooding.
There’s the story of a Coast Guard flight surgeon, Cmdr. Jeffrey Salvon-Harman, who acted as a manual ventilator for a newborn premature infant for an hour and a half on a dangerous helicopter flight from South Bend, Wash. to a hospital in Oregon. You’ll never hear about Comdr. Salvon-Harman’s story probably anywhere but here, because the Olympic Peninsula’s sole newspaper doesn’t put most of its stories on its Web site, so I’m typing up some it below the fold — just so someone reads it. However, this next story made it on the Web site, and goes with the photo above:
Coast Guard crew recounts rescues in flood zone
A week ago today, they were navigating their HH-65 Dolphin helicopters by the tops of buildings made unfamiliar by raging flood waters, and watching for points of light.
“The first thing we noticed was lights in the water,” said Petty Officer Mike O’Leary of Coast Guard Group/Air Station Port Angeles.
“People were signaling to us with flashlights.”
[THE STORY ABOUT THE FLIGHT SURGEON is at the end.]
CAPTION: “Some of the Coast Guard Group/Air Station Port Angeles crew members who helped in rescue attempts in the Chehalis area last week are, from left, Petty Officer Jarod Enright, Cmdr. Jeff Salvon-Harmon, Lt. Justin Hunt, Petty Officer Greg Mayes, Petty Officer Mike O’Leary, Petty Officer Michael Sterrett, Lt. j.g. Christian Polyak, Petty Officer Steve Sergeiko and Lt. Scott Barton. The group is standing in front of a helicopter at the Port Angeles station on Ediz Hook.”
And here’s the rest of the story, “Coast Guard crew recounts rescues in flood zone“:
The crew that O’Leary served with left at 1 p.m. last Monday to fly 155 miles south to flooded Chehalis in Lewis County, where it rescued at least 19 people from buildings in a muddy ravine.
Another crew, which left at 8 p.m. that day, plucked people from the Chehalis-Centralia Airport after it had flooded.
Other crews also flew out to rescue those in need.
“This is what we trained for,” said Lt. j.g. Christian Polyack, copilot of a crew piloted by Lt. Justin Hunt.
The crews’ training over water at night was useful on this mission because there were no references except for buildings, Polyack said.
Said Hunt, “It was kind of scary flying down, because you don’t know where all the wires are.”
Their night vision goggles made spotting people’s flashlights in the dark much easier, Hunt said.
Frightened but relieved
O’Leary said that several rescues were conducted in a muddy ravine by the Chehalis River about six miles west of Chehalis, where the pilot was able to lower the helicopter as close as 20 feet above the ground.The 19 people rescued were flown to the Chehalis-Centralia Airport, then taken to an emergency shelter.
“They were pretty scared, but definitely relieved,” O’Leary said.
He remembered in particular one terrified 95-year-old woman who was plucked from the top of a rural home outside of Chehalis.
After he was lowered to put the woman, her daughter and a man into a rescue litter, Petty Officer Greg Mayes hoisted them into the helicopter and helped the people out of the basket.
“I just had to grab her out of the basket, and she wasn’t helping at all,” said Maynes, who had never before hoisted a person in a non-training situation.
“She tried to pull my arms off me.”
Those who were rescued left everything they had.
O’Leary said each person wanted to take a bag of belongings, but the only one permitted to do so was carrying his mother’s medications.
One man just wanted a ride back to his house.
“We told him we aren’t a taxi service,” O’Leary said.
The water kept rising as the crews worked.
Airport stricken
O’Leary watched as the Chehalis-Centralia Airport was covered with up to three feet of water within 20 minutes while the crew members were walking to the staging area from there.
The water also flooded two Lewis County patrol cars parked there.
It forced rescuers to land at an airfield in the Lewis County town of Toldeo and at the football field at W.F. West High School in Chehalis.
They attempted to fly farther south but were discouraged by limited visibility, 30-knot sustained winds and their unfamiliarity with the area, O’Leary said.
The crew that left at 8 p.m. from Port Angeles helped in the rescue of people from the flooded airport.
The followed Interstate 5 south to get to it, and watched other helicopters hoisting people off roofs as they traveled.
At the airport, they lowering a rescue swimmer in only a harness instead of the usual litter basket because it was faster.
The rescues from the airport were from about 35 feet in the air.
Another rescue from a Wal-Mart roof was from about 75 feet in the air, Hunt said.
The photo below appeared in the newspaper last week — two of the Coast Guard rescuers are helping a dog to safety. After hearing the heart-breaking stories of people forced to abandon their pets during the Katrina flooding, I’m glad to see that pets were rescued by the military. Farm animals didn’t fare so well — hundreds, probably thousands, died. You’ll want to read this fine article by a Seattle Times reporter, “Heroic neighbors fought flood’s fury, but many animals couldn’t be saved.” (The last couple paragraphs provide an “up” ending to an otherwise tragic story.)
HERE IS THE STORY about the flight surgeon that didn’t make the newspaper’s Web site or, unfortunately, any wire service since I can’t find it anywhere. I’m typing up some parts from the print edition of the paper:
Cmdr. Jeffrey Salvon-Harman kept an infant alive last week.
He has been a Coast Guard flight surgeon for seven years, but Tuesday’s evacuation of a 34-year-old woman and her newborn baby from Willapa Harbor Hospital in South Bend [Wash.] was a first.
It included acting as a manual ventilator for the baby for more than an hour while it and the mother were transported to Emanual Hospital in Portland, Ore.
[...]
[The Coast Guard was asked to] evacuate the woman and her baby, who was having trouble breathing.
“I had to breathe for the baby for one hour and 22 minutes,” Salvon-Harman said.
[....]
Doctors had performed a Cesarean section [on the 31-week pregnant woman]. The newborn was breathing, but only weakly. …
A breathing tube was inserted into the child and attached to an ambu bag, a balloon about the size of a fist …
Inserting the breathing tube took six attempts, he said.
Salvon-Harman served as a manual ventilator for the baby, gently squeezing the balloon and keeping its breathing going while the helicopter flew just above tree top level to avoid low clouds on the way to Portland.
Cmdr. Keith Russell, the co-pilot, said they had to conduct a “hot refuel” — in which the gas hose is in the tank with the engine running — because the first hospital they flew to wouldn’t take the baby in its condition.
Then at the Red Cross’ request, the helicopter crew flew back to Willapa Harbor Hospital with blood supplies so the hospital could continue operating despite being cut off by flood waters.
The baby was taken off the electronic ventilator at the hospital by Tuesday afternoon, Salvon-Harman said.
“It was an amazing team effort.”
BY THE WAY, did you know that regular blog visitor Brenda Stewart was a military flight nurse?
by Ronald Scott
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