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Flythe copter8/4/2023 ![]() ![]() Nevertheless, Flythe explains, "when guys go into a bar and someone asks what they do, they'll say, 'I'm a rescue swimmer.'" As he explains, Coast Guard rescue swimmers technically are designated as aviation survival technicians (AST). ![]() After an investigation of the disaster, Congress directed the Coast Guard to train selected members of the service to go into the water to perform rescues.įlythe, one of the Coast Guard's initial group of rescue swimmers, later ran rescue swimmer training at the service's facility in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and eventually became manager of the national rescue swimming program before retiring in 2007. By the time the rescue team arrived on the scene, most of the people in the water had developed hypothermia and were unable to climb into the aircraft's rescue basket, and despite a day's worth of grueling efforts, only three of the ship's crew of 34 were saved. Coast Guard helicopter team attempted to rescue 34 crew members of the ship the Marine Electric that capsized during a winter storm off the coast of Virginia. The Coast Guard's rescue swimmer program was created after the 1983 Marine Electric tragedy, in which a U.S. As the service's website notes, they're key members in helicopter crews that rescue people from the most precarious of situations - "off cliff faces and rooftops, ice flows and glaciers, and from crashing surf and ocean caves." Welcome to the hazardous, high-pressure world of Coast Guard rescue swimmers, who are trained to jump from helicopters into the water to save lives. "If he gets away from me, it's easy to lose contact," Flythe explains. "I had to do a break on him, use pressure points, sort of like wrestling moves, to get him to calm down." Unlike a lifeguard in a pool, rescue swimmers can't let go of someone, no matter what. When it came time to help them get into the basket lift that the copter had lowered, the second man became alarmed by the copter's rotor wash. Coast Guard helicopter rescue swimmer Joseph "Butch" Flythe recalls one of his early rescues, in which he jumped out of a helicopter into the water 100 miles (161 kilometers) off North Carolina's Cape Hatteras to help two men whose sailboat had capsized in a squall. Rescue swimmers and air crewmen from Coast Guard Air Station Cape Cod, Massachusetts, conduct hoist training on June 23, 2015. ![]()
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