U.S. Coast Guard photo/PA2 Nathan Henise.

The 70-knot winds make standing a challenge and visibility is nearly impossible in the darkness. The seas rage and pelting spray from the chopper slaps my face. The sounds of whirling helicopter rotors, C-130s flying overhead and the roar of thunder echo inside my ears. But I am not experiencing this nightmare from a distressed boat somewhere off the Outer Banks coast. I am standing on a pool deck at the U.S. Coast Guard Aviation Technical Training Center in Elizabeth City and experiencing these conditions via a simulated exercise.

This exercise is taking place inside the multi-million dollar training facility and is the only site in the world that trains the elite USCG Helicopter Rescue Swimmers. Simulation technology allows 70 knot winds; wave generators can create three-foot waves; and sound systems can create mayday calls, helicopter sounds, and storms.

Photo by Michelle Wagner

The two-year-old facility includes a 1.3 million-gallon pool complete with a high-tech sound system, wave generators, and two 15-foot hoist towers that together make up the bulk of the training grounds for rescue swimmer recruits. The facility is also equipped with an underwater modular egress training pool, also known as “the dunker.” With boat cabin and helicopter cockpit replicas that can literally submerge and flip, the pool is used to train crew members escape maneuvers and has all the capabilities of the larger pool to simulate stressful aquatic environments.

Long overdue for a military sect whose primary focus is on saving civilians during peacetime, the aquatic facility serves as the mainstay for recruits across the country. Before its construction, training was confined to an old recreational pool that was too small and too shallow to adequately simulate rescue maneuvers.

So Others May Live – Becoming a Helicopter Rescue Swimmer

A new class of students filters in every ten weeks to the Elizabeth City training facility in an attempt to complete the grueling 24-week program in order to become Aviation Survival Technicians (ASTs). If they manage to be one of the few who make it through the program, their reward will be to drop from helicopters into some of the harshest conditions Mother Nature can whip up to save civilians stranded in treacherous waters. Notorious as one of the toughest training programs in the U.S. Coast Guard, helicopter rescue swimmers are an elite bunch. To date, only 880 candidates have managed to graduate from the program since its inception in 1985 and it is known for a daunting attrition rate at above 50 percent.

The Guardian Ethos

“They have to come out of here able to take control. As a rescue swimmer, you are the calm in the storm. You have to figure out what it is you are going to do to help these people,” says AST instructor, Matthew O’Dell. “We can only do so much to simulate heavy seas, so we push them harder and longer so that one day they will be ready for that. We give them more than they think they can handle and then observe how they react.”

Photo by Michelle Wagner

The drop-out rate of the junior class being observed this early spring day is already a little higher than usual; the class has dwindled from 24 students to just 8 after 10 weeks of training. After a full morning workout of land and water training, each student must complete a rescue on a compliant swimmer in less than 10 minutes. And it is still early in the program. In a few weeks, they will have to complete tasks such as escape and release on non-compliant survivors – one of the most brutal challenges. The skills they must master include everything, from rescuing downed aviators to taking control of non-compliant survivors who may attempt to climb on top of them in panic. Their final task will be what is called “multis,” where they may be required to rescue up to six survivors within a set time frame.

For each task, recruits get three chances to perform.

They fail and they are out. They must reapply and re-start the 24 weeks if they want to try again. It is devastating but routine for an AST candidate. Some may go through the program two or three times before even getting a glimpse of graduation.

The key, says O’Dell, is confidence and comfort in the water. “You have to believe in yourself,” he says of the mental challenges the recruits face on a daily basis. “You have to absolutely believe you can do it. Once doubt creeps in your mind, the possibility of failure grows exponentially.” After the six months, an average of four to six in a class will actually make it to graduation. Even if they do, they face six to eight months of on-the-job training and two months of emergency medical technician training. “This [6-month training] is a big hurdle, but they still have a long road ahead of them.”

Petty Officer 1st Class Bret Fogle, a rescue swimmer from Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City, N.C, helps guide a rescue basket containing an Academy cadet up to a MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter from the air station, Friday, Aug. 3, 2012. The crews conducted hoist training with cadets from the Coast Guard Academy in New London, CT, as part of their week-long summer visit to the air station. U.S. Coast Guard photo/Petty Officer 3rd Class David Weydert.

The training program will surely filter out any who are not cut out for the job. For four and a half months – five days a week and seven to eight hours a day – they are pushing their physical limits on land and in water. O’Dell describes it as high-risk training but standardized to maintain the safety of the students. “We have an on-base medical response team that we call for a variety of reasons – dizziness, fainting, water inhalation, pain, sometimes even loss of consciousness,” O’Dell says. “They have to be able to operate in heavy seas for 30 minutes or more. The skills we teach and endurance that they train for are so important because lives depend on it.”

The goal of escape and release training is to test the students on how they will deal with non-compliant or panicked survivors, whose actions can be unpredictable in a stressful situation. That was the hitch for Samuel Knoeppel, a 24-year-old candidate from Maui, Hawaii who is on his second round of training. The first time, he made it a month before failing that very test. “I have a Type A personality and this is a profession in which I can impact someone’s life,” according to the airman who says he basically grew up in the ocean. “I have the physical ability and I want to use it to help people.” Knoeppel states that the daily grind is the hardest part of training to get through. He said he has to remind himself every day why he is here.

Melanie Carter, a 23-year-old from Windsor, Connecticut and former college wrestler, is the only woman in the junior class. If she gets through the program, she will join the ranks of just a handful of female Coast Guard helicopter rescue swimmers. “The reason I joined the Coast Guard was to serve people and save lives, so this is the perfect job. And I always try to do the most challenging thing,” she said. This, too, is Carter’s second shot at getting through the training. The first time she attempted the program, she failed the gear swim test in which recruits have to swim 2,000 meters while wearing their heavy rescue equipment.

Of course, the test is timed. Everything is timed here. O’Dell explains, “When you are operating out of a helicopter in an emergency situation, time is never on your side. You need to think, decide and act in a quick and timely manner. We always move with a sense of urgency.”

Carter’s biggest challenge, she says, is maintaining mental stability. “Every day you need to tell yourself you can do it.”

While the junior class cranks out swim laps, pounds the pavement for miles of running and masters lifesaving skills, the senior class was receiving air station orders. Of the 24 who began, there are only four who will be assigned as ASTs to air stations across the country – anywhere from Alaska to Puerto Rico.

Photo by Michelle Wagner

Luke Mathews of New Port Richey, Florida and Steven Catala-Vargas of Puerto Rico are two of the few who have graduated from the program on their first attempt. Yang Burgos, also from Puerto Rico, has attempted the program three times before finally graduating this year. “When I first heard about rescue swimmers and how they jumped from helicopters to save people, I thought, ‘Wow, cool.’ I didn’t know what it took, but I found out the hard way,” Burgos said.

For Jordan Gilbert, of Boise, Idaho, it was an easy decision. His dad was in the Coast Guard and he always knew it was what he wanted to do. It took him two attempts to finally graduate. “If you quit mentally, you are done,” he said. “You have to stay focused 100 percent of the time.”
Assigned to Save – The Waters they Guard

It can be anywhere from the frigid waters of the Oregon coast to the turbulent waters off the Gulf Stream; once these rescue swimmers graduate and post their names on the training pool plaque, they will be assigned to an air station where they will have another 6-8 months of aircraft specific training and 2 months of EMT Training.

There are countless stories of how the Coast Guard’s top rescuers have plucked survivors out of hurricane-whipped seas and hypothermic waters. Whether they were latched on to cable wires or sent up into hovering helicopters by rescue or litter baskets, there is a long list of survivors who owe their lives to these airmen who chose to put it all on the line to save a life.

Petty Officer 3rd class Darren Hicks is hoisted into an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter from Air Station Elizabeth City, N.C., while conducting rescue swimmer training in the James River in the vicinity of the Monitor-Merrimack Bridge Tunnel, Dec. 28, 2011. Coast Guard Jayhawk air crews train regularly in swimmer deployments and recovery in waters within their area of responsibility. U.S. Coast Guard photo/Petty Officer 3rd class David Weydert.

But there are some stories that stick with the rescue swimmers more than others, like the one O’Dell tells of the time he rescued three men from a fishing boat after it had traveled into the shipping lane off Cape Cod. There was dense fog and the boat had been hit by a freighter.

The rescue was routine, but what followed was not.

Tears welling up in his eyes, O’Dell recalls the note he received from the mother of the youngest of the survivors thanking him. “I still have it in my scrapbook,” he said. It’s knowing you are making a difference that sticks.” ■

Author: Michelle Wagner

Michelle Wagner has been living and writing on the Outer Banks for over 15 years.