Latest news with #MH-60
Yahoo
09-07-2025
- Yahoo
Video shows teens' adventure turn frightening near popular tourist destination
Two teenagers are lucky to be alive following a harrowing helicopter rescue by the U.S. Coast Guard after straying from a popular Oregon tourist destination over the weekend. The daring rescue unfolded Saturday near Roads End Point recreation site, where the two teens and a member of the Lincoln County Fire Department became trapped on a cliffside on Saturday, according to the Coast Guard. Video Shows Coast Guard Save Family In Helicopter Rescue Mission Near Vacation Destination Officials with the Coast Guard Sector Columbia River were dispatched to the scene after receiving reports of the two stranded teens trapped alongside a firefighter who was initially sent to rescue the pair. Dramatic footage shows an MH-60 helicopter crew locating the three distressed individuals on the rocky cliff before hoisting them to safety just yards away from the dangerous coastline. Multiple People Dead, 2 Missing After Boat Capsizes At Vacation Hotspot Read On The Fox News App They were then transported to Siletz Bay State Airfield. Roads End Point is a popular coastal destination where visitors can enjoy tidepools, hidden coves and islands formed by "fragments of lava," according to Oregon State Parks. Coast Guard Rescues 2 After Small Plane Declares Emergency, Crashes Near Connecticut Airport "Our air crews frequently train with our agency partner agencies to conduct rescues in a variety of conditions and terrain in the Pacific Northwest," CDR Amanda Denning, executive officer of Coast Guard Air Station Astoria, said in a statement. "We are extremely happy that we were able to rescue the three individuals and transport them to safety."Original article source: Video shows teens' adventure turn frightening near popular tourist destination


Miami Herald
08-07-2025
- General
- Miami Herald
Two 14-year-olds trapped on cliff near God's Thumb saved, Oregon firefighters say
A U.S. Coast Guard helicopter plucked two teens off a cliff near the God's Thumb rock outcrop on the Oregon coast, firefighters reported. The teens became stuck trying to climb a cliff from the beach to God's Thumb on Saturday, July 5, North Lincoln Fire & Rescue said in a news release on Facebook. A Coast Guard MH-60 helicopter crew stationed in Astoria hoisted the teens to safety along with a firefighter who became stuck trying to reach them, the Coast Guard said in a news release. A video shows the crew hoisting the climbers. The two 14-year-olds were flown to a nearby beach and reunited with their families, firefighters told KPTV. Cody Heidt, deputy chief fire marshal for the agency, told KOIN the rescue operation cost an estimated $20,000. 'What tends to happen is they make it to nearly the top, about 30 to 40 feet from the summit,' Heidt told KPTV. 'It goes almost vertical there. So when they get to that point, they don't feel safe coming down because of the loose rocks, and they can't go up anymore.' Two other climbers also had to be rescued by helicopter from the cliff earlier this year, firefighters said. Lincoln County is about a 130-mile drive southwest from Portland.


New York Post
08-07-2025
- General
- New York Post
Stranded teens cling to dangerous cliffside until chopper swoops in for daring rescue: video
Two frightened teenagers trapped on a precarious cliff in Oregon were pulled to safety in a daring Coast Guard chopper rescue — along with a local firefighter stranded trying to reach the pair. The drama unfolded Saturday near Roads End Point in Lincoln County, after the teens found themselves cornered on a cliffside, according to a Coast Guard press release. 3 The Coast Guard dispatched an MH-60 chopper to a cliff where two teens were stranded Saturday in Oregon. USCG 3 A Coast Guard crew member rappelled down to two teens stranded on an Oregon cliffside on Saturday. USCG An MH-60 helicopter was launched from the guard's Columbia River sector to reach the two. Video of the operation shows a Coast Guard member being lowered down to the cliff high atop the rocky coastline and buckling each one separately and pulling them into the chopper. The crew then plucked a member of the Lincoln County Fire Department who was trapped while trying to reach the teens earlier off the ridge and also pulled him on board. 3 The Coast Guard pulled two stranded teens and a local firefighter who had tried to rescue them to safety on Saturday. USCG 'Our air crews frequently train with our agency partner agencies to conduct these rescues in a variety of conditions and terrain in the Pacific Northwest,' Amanda Denning, executive officer of the Coast Guard Air Station Astoria, said in a statement. 'We are extremely happy that we were able to rescue the three individuals and transport them to safety.' All three were transported to Siletz Bay State Airfield and taken to a local hospital for observation.
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Father and son rescued after boat sinks off Virginia Beach coast
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) – The Coast Guard rescued a father and son 34 miles southwest of Virginia Beach Thursday morning. 30-year-old Jeffery Hudson was rescued alongside his father 60-year-old Robert Hudson after their sporting boat began to take on water, causing the boat to sink. At 9:07 a.m. Thursday, Coast Guard Sector Virginia Command Center watchstanders received a distress call from the crew of the 57-foot sport fisher boat Turn Me Loose, reporting their vessel was sinking and they were abandoning ship into their life raft. The watchstanders issued an urgent marine information broadcast (UMIB) which led to the dispatch of a 45-foot Response Boat (Coast Guard Station Little Creek), a Jayhawk helicopter crew (Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City MH-60), and patrol (USCGC Pompano WPD 87339). The crew of USCGC Calhoun (WMSL 759) and Virginia Beach Fire Boat 12 also responded after hearing the UMIB. The Coast Guard was able to pinpoint the location with the boaters' help. At 10:03 a.m., the Calhoun crew and a rescue helicopter arrived on scene to find the two men in a life raft. The Calhoun crew brought the men to safety and determined neither had any injuries. The men were ultimately brought to Virginia Beach Fire Boat 12, where they were reunited with their family. 'This successful rescue highlights the importance of preparedness and the effectiveness of coordinated efforts between multiple agencies and assets,' said Chief Warrant Officer 3 Daniel Butierries, Sector Virginia command duty officer. 'The quick response and the mariners' preparedness significantly contributed to the rescue.' The Turn Me Loose remains partially submerged approximately 30 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach. The Coast Guard has issued a broadcast notice to advise mariners to avoid the submerged object. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Coast Guard pulls workers from hardening concrete after roof collapse
When Coast Guard rescuers reached four men who had tumbled into a 40-foot industrial tank at the top of a Washington mountain, they found that two of the men were hurt too badly to move, and one of them was lying in a pool of fast-drying concrete. The workers had been installing a roof on the steel tank when it collapsed, sending the crew and tons of debris falling to the bottom. When Coast Guard rescue swimmers, Chief Benjamin Brown and Aviation Survival Technician Jon Claridge, reached the bottom of the tank, they found themselves in a cramped, dark, and chaotic scene. 'On top of that was all the construction debris,' Brown told Task & Purpose. 'The workers had been pouring concrete on the roof before it collapsed. So the ground was uncured concrete. The consistency was just like mud when we initially got down there, and then as the scene went on, it started to cure and got a little harder. One of the patients was lying on his back, sort of, like, as if he had fallen in mud. So we had to kind of dig him out.' Over the next three hours, the swimmers and the Oregon-based crew on the MH-60 extracted the four men from the bottom of the tank, pulling off a uniquely challenging rescue, even by the full-throttle standards of the Coast Guard. In the tank, the rescue swimmers — experts in rolling waves and high winds of mid-ocean rescues, but far less familiar with confined industrial accidents — juggled four patients, two of whom were critically hurt. The pair worked amid the debris and hardening concrete from the collapsed roof as they treated what injuries they could and packaged each patient for a long hoist out of the tank. In the MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter, the pilots watched their gauges and orbited to save gas, knowing they could not leave or even land to conserve fuel because of radio contact with the swimmers. But while the pilots flew and the rescue swimmers tended to the patients, the center of the mission was the helicopter's flight mechanic, Logan Harris. Over the course of three hours, Harris executed nearly a dozen hoists, navigating both the rescue swimmers and the four patients out of the tank, whose rim was now a jagged mess of rebar poles. Over 100 feet below, missing the hoist by just a foot could snag a swimmer or a patient, endangering them and the helicopter. And though most of the crew were seasoned rescue veterans, the mission was Harris' second-ever live rescue. 'I don't have a ton of experience as a flight mechanic. One live hoist previous to this. I won't say it was a mundane case, but certainly nothing like this,' said Harris, who spent six years as a helicopter mechanic in the Marines before joining the Coast Guard to fly. 'I definitely pushed the envelope for me personally, but we had a solid crew that kind of kept everything together.' Harris, Brown, and pilots Lt. Mike Travers and Lt. Mike Bucha had spent the morning on a training flight in an Astoria, Oregon-based MH-60, by coincidence, practicing a hoist over dryland. But soon after returning to Astoria, a call arrived from local first responders asking for assistance. 'We got the word it might be four people trapped inside of a water tower that had potentially collapsed, and that was really all we got,' Travers said. 'It worked out because most of us were already in our dry suits, ready to go. I met Chief Brown at the aircraft right for the pre-flight, and told him what was going on. And that was when he asked if it would be a good idea to bring a second rescue swimmer, which is generally a common practice we try to employ when we're doing anything inland, because some of those environments can be rather demanding and it's nice to have a second person on the ground.' After a 30-minute flight to Taholah, Washington, on the west coast of the Olympia peninsula, the crew arrived overhead and quickly learned that the fire departments on the ground had no way to reach the men inside the tank. They decided the two swimmers would be hoisted down. It would be, Harris quickly realized, far from routine. 'So the structure having rebar on the outside was definitely a major point of contention,' Harris said. 'Devices coming up and down can get impacted by the rotor wash and get a bad swing. So, obviously, that swing heading towards rebar is not good.' A second major issue would be the height. While a typical Coast Guard hoist during a mission might be from 40 feet high, the tank forced the helicopter to hover at 120 feet above the ground. Any lower, Harris said, and the winds from the helicopter's rotor wash — trapped and amplified by the tank's walls — would have been unbearable to both the rescuers and patients inside. 'From the height of the hoist, it's hard to tell exactly what the swimmers are looking at down there, so I was trying to keep [a] really close eye on their hand signals,' Harris said. 'Where they need to go, where they need devices to be.' Harris estimated that the tank was probably 30 feet wide, but when its roof collapsed, dozens of steel rebar rods poked inwards around the lip. That meant when he lowered the swimmers or, later, each time he raised a patient in a 7-foot steel litter, he had to bring them up through the lip of exposed rebar. 'Navigating devices in and out of that environment was particularly tricky,' he said. Over the course of the three-hour rescue, Harris lowered and raised the helicopter's cable over a dozen times, never getting hung up. When the four workers fell, all were injured but two more seriously than their coworkers, who could walk. One who could not move was lying in a pool of wet, uncured concrete. Though the concrete was still wet and pliable when the rescuers arrived, they quickly realized they were in a race to free the patient and finish the rescue before it set. By the time the team left, the material had hardened under their feet, said Claridge, one of the other rescue swimmers who was lowered into the tank. 'I was having to use my hands and dig some of that wet concrete away from his side, because we only had like six inches all around him to work,' said Claridge. 'So we were just digging, like, holes to try and get space to move in.' The crew originally believed they could make quick work of lifting the men in a rescue basket, a small cage that patients can sit inside to be hoisted up. But all four men were too badly hurt and would need to be put on backboards and sent up in a litter — which, at nearly seven feet long, would be more likely to be caught up on the exposed rebar. Adding to the difficulty was their workspace. The only spot on the floor of the tank clear enough for the two to treat a patient and load them in the litter was against the wall, which was far off the straight line down the center that the hoist needed to follow. Each time Harris raised a patient with his controls up above, the swimmers had to grab the litter and stabilize it in the center of the tank. In the helicopter, Travers and Bucha were worried about two issues: fuel and communicating with their swimmers. The helicopter had left Astoria with a full tank that might last five hours if the pilots conserved fuel. But the long hovers for the hoists ate into that time. 'The closest place to get fuel was about 30 miles away,' said Travers. 'But one of the big things that ended up being a big gas drainer for us was we had no way to communicate with them unless we were directly over the top. A lot of times, if we can, we'd like to land, and that'll preserve a lot of fuel, but just because we had no way to communicate with them, it wasn't the right decision for us to kind of hang them out to dry by themselves with no way to communicate. So we just went into what we call a max endurance orbit over the top and primarily operated off hand signals instead of a radio.' A key time saver was the organization by first responders around the tank. Fire and ambulance services from local fire departments lined up ambulances on a road 200 yards from the tank. After each patient was brought on board — a process that required Harris to not just operate the hoist, but then pull up the litter's 120-foot guide line by hand each time — the crew immediately landed at the ambulances, where a crew would transfer the patient to a gurney, handing Harris a new backboard to replace the one with the patient. 'We would not have been as successful without the help of the local EMS and fire department,' said Travers. 'They really set up a pretty amazing operation on the ground for us to be able to transfer the patients quickly.' Army to eliminate 2 Security Force Assistance Brigades, reassign experienced soldiers Why the Army's new XM7 rifle reignited a debate over volume of fire Air Force delay on separation and retirement orders isn't 'stop loss,' defense official says F-35's close call over Yemen raises questions about how it's used An Army unit's 'extreme use of profanity' was so bad, they made a rule about it