A U.S. Coast Guard helicopter temporarily stationed in Cold Bay medevaced two men from a bulk carrier in the vicinty Wednesday night, after they received severe burns in a boiler accident. According to a Thursday statement from Petty Officer 1st Class Shawn Eggert, the 609-foot Astoria Bay first reported the accident Tuesday to watchstanders with the Coast Guard’s 17th District. The Hong Kong-flagged vessel has been en route from Port Angeles, Wash. to Tianjin, China. “The watchstanders consulted the duty flight surgeon who recommended the Astoria Bay monitor the men’s conditions and alter course to Dutch Harbor,” Eggert wrote. “The helicopter crew was launched to conduct the medevac when the men’s condition worsened.” An MH-60 Jayhawk launched from a forward operating location in Cold Bay and rendezvoused with the vessel about 207 miles southwest of the Aleutians East Borough community, hoisting the men during conditions including 25-knot winds and 10-foot seas. The crew flew the men to the Cold Bay Clinic, from which a commercial medevac flights took them to the Harborview Burn Center in Seattle. In an earlier Coast Guard statement on the Cold Bay FOL, Guardsmen say an Air Station Kodiak helicopter had been stationed there during the red king crab fishery in October and November. A chopper and crew returned to the FOL, which cuts up to two hours of flight time for incidents in the area compared to responses from Kodiak, in December for the opilio crab fishery. Eggert says that while the Coast Guard has increased its forward basing of ships and aircraft in Alaska as the U.S. revises its Arctic strategy, the Cold Bay FOL is still a temporary post. “It’s not a permanent one, as far as I’ve heard,” Eggert said. Eggert didn’t immediately have word on the nationality of the crewmen Thursday. With the medevac complete, the Astoria Bay has reportedly resumed its course to China.
↧