Friday, March 4, 2016

OK this officially bothers me

NASA photo shows the Bering Strait choked with ice.


Alaska is a place where lots of adventurers like to challenge the elements and set off on outrageous expeditions, often underestimating the challenge. In the old days they just never came back. But now, in the days of GPS, SPOT locaters, satellite telephones and several agencies set up to rescue those people, the ones Darwin's theory might have separated from the herd, when they call for help, often requiring heroic efforts by rescuers, and make it back, only to try again if they haven't learned a lesson.

A perfect example occurred in the last couple of days. These two guys decided they would challenge the Bering Strait in late winter, attempting to trek from Wales on the Alaska mainland to Little Diomede, an island out in the middle somewhere. They had skis and kayaks to make their way across ice and open water, in the dynamic ocean environment of winter storms and shifting ice floes.

Thursday the Coast Guard had to fly two helicopters and an fixed wing aircraft all the way from Kodiak to pick them up. It turns out the ice was too thin to walk on and there was too much of it to kayak through it. Imagine that. So they activated their emergency locater beacons and waited for the cavalry.
NASA satellite image of Bering Strait without ice. Cape Dezhnev, Russia
is on the left, the two Diomede Islands are in the middle, and 
Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska is on the right.

The Coast Guard rescue crews stationed in Kodiak are loved in Alaska. Watch the movie "The Guardian" some time. They risk their lives constantly rescuing mariners in trouble along Alaska's coast which is longer than the coastline of the rest of the United States combined, literally from Ketchikan to Barrow and that's about to be extended all the way around to the Canadian border in the Arctic Ocean. Year after year we experience or at least read about these people who go out in the worst weather in their helicopters of all things and pull fishermen and sailors off their sinking vessels. That is their job and they consistently perform admirably.

What's wrong here is this time they had to rescue two guys from a misguided adventure as in "hey look at this map of the Bering Strait, I bet we could ski and kayak across it in winter; I bet nobody has ever done that." There's probably a real good reason nobody has done that, if in fact it has never been done.

So the end result is two Coast Guard helicopter crews plus others are sent in hazard to rescue these yokels from a whim of an adventure that didn't have to happen. It's not the first time and it won't be the last. And from the Guard's point of view, you can't really ignore them and leave them out there. You think of the families of the crews whose fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers face death in their helos just to pluck these people from their own mistakes. Besides the danger, imagine the cost to taxpayers of flying two helicopters and a fixed wing and their crews about 500 miles each way to extract adventurers from the Bering ice. In recent years some agencies have begun charging the people they rescue. It's the least these guys could do to pay for their foolishness. They are damned lucky to be alive to pay it.

A bit of an aside here. If you read this blog, you know I use a Spot locater. And while I know I could  use it if I ever got into trouble, the main reason I bought it was a couple times I was a day or two late getting back and some people almost reached the point of calling for a rescue or at least a check on me. My daily check-ins with the Spot prevent anyone from calling an unnecessary rescue on me. Now THAT would be an embarrassing situation.

So, the end result is the Coast Guard in Alaska has pulled off another rescue, two adventurers are all smiles as they ride in a helo from the middle of the Bering Strait to Nome and a warm flight home while the Guard flight crews head back to Kodiak, check and repair and restock their gear in order to be prepared for the next call, all in a day's work, in this case a day's work that didn't really have to happen.

Coast Guard rescues two men stranded in Bering Strait (Anchorage Dispatch News)
British explorers describe their rescue from the Bering Sea
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1 comment:

  1. SuzyMarch 6, 2016 at 7:52 AM

    My brother, who is a volunteer fireman, once did a cliff rescue where the guy he rescued kept telling my brother what a superior climber he (the rescued) was to my brother (the rescuer).

    And when my sister was working on the ambulance, she and her partner stopped to tell someone in a Zodiac not to take it out on the open sea. They did it anyway, and guess who got to save their sorry asses?

    People are idiots.

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