Coast Guard fliers head out Aleutian Chain for injured crewman

Another long-distance medevac is getting underway on Monday for an injured freighter crewman in the North Pacific.

The 22-year old Filipino national apparently fell 20 feet while on board the bulk carrier Anne Mette Bulker. The 606-foot long vessel recently departed the continental United States for a destination in China. It was over 500-miles southwest of Adak when the unspecified accident occurred. The vessel is now turning back so that Coast Guard helicopters can approach the vessel and hoist the man aboard.

The crewman is reportedly suffering from facial injuries including two missing teeth. He’s conscious, but he cannot walk and he may be suffering from possible head or internal injuries. The crewman has been bleeding from the ears, nose, and mouth.

Coast Guard Petty Officer Mark Leuchte of the Command Center in Juneau says two C-130 aircraft and two H-60 helicopters were scheduled to leave Kodiak on Monday morning for the flight to Adak. A third C-130 flight crew and a third H-60 flight crew will ride along so that crews can be rotated out during the long flight out the Aleutian Chain.

One of the H-60 helicopters will fly out from Adak to the freighter while a C-130 will typically fly overhead as a communications platform. Once the injured crewman is hoisted aboard the H-60 and then transported back to Adak, a commercial medevac service will pick him up and transport him to Anchorage for medical treatment.

Coast Guard fliers performed a similar long-distance rescue of an injured freighter crewman in the North Pacific last month.

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