JUNEAU, Alaska — A Coast Guard Air Station Kodiak MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter aircrew medically evacuated a fisherman approximately 50-miles northeast of St. Paul, Friday.
Coast Guard District 17 command center watchstanders received the initial notification from Health Force Partners reporting a 51-year-old male, aboard the fishing vessel Araho, suffered a leg injury when he was stacking fish pans and a storage crate fell on him.
Air Station Kodiak quickly launched a Jayhawk crew to assist with a C-130 Hercules aircraft crew providing communications cover. The Jayhawk crew arrived on scene, lowered a rescue swimmer who safely positioned the fisherman in a stokes litter, brought him into the Jayhawk cabin and transported him to the St. Paul Clinic.
“We quickly launched a Jayhawk crew that was in Cold Bay after responding to an earlier case,” said Lt. John Post, Coast Guard Air Station Kodiak operations duty officer. “Our crews expertise along with assistance from the Araho crew allowed the Jayhawk to transport the patient to the medical care in St. Paul that he desperately needed.”
Weather on scene at the time of the medevac was 10-mph winds and two-foot seas.
U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Charly Hengen (archive).
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