Heroic rescue saves seven from Bering Sea
The Nome Nugget August 19, 1993 Alaska's Oldest Newspaper
By Sherri McBride
Very courageous, ready and able Nome heroes reached into the chilly Bering Sea to rescue seven people whose plane ran out of gas about three miles west of Sledge Island at 7:40 Friday evening as they returned from Lavrentiya, Russia.
A Missionary Aviation and Repair Center (MARC) pilot, another MARC pilot's wife and five gospel concert members were adrift in the Bering Sea. They were: Pamela M. Swedberg,30 of Soldotna; David L.C. Anderson,49, of Phoenix, Arizona; Cary R. Dietsche,35, of Emery, Wisconsin; Brian S. Brasher,24, of Okaville, Illinois; Donald G. Wharton,41, of Madison, Tennessee; Barbara Anderson, 51, of Phoenix, and the pilot, David G. Cochran,70 of Kenai.
The five gospel concert musicians, who travel all over the U.S. and around the world, were on their fourth trip to Alaska.
When David Anderson had called the Mission Aviation and Repair Center (MARC) people in Soldotna and offered to come to the Eskimo villages during August, they suggested the group go to Russia instead.
MARC was establishing contacts in Provedeniya and Lavrentiya, and would value their ministry there, Anderson said.
Over the months the group raised several thousand dollars to pay for the trip, and they also raised money for 300 hard bound, color-illustrated Bibles, and the people in Soldotna raised money for 200 more. The group collected 700-800 pounds of medical supplies from various groups and had it shipped up, he said.The seven had flown from Lavrentiya to Provedeniya, flew on to Gambell, then 24 miles from Nome the plane went down, he said.
Including the gospel concert musicians there were more than 25 people, most of whom were from the Soldotna Bible Chapel or MARC, and they were "absolutely committed to helping these people," said Anderson.
The Soldotna people bought 3,500 pounds of fruit, vegetables, rice, sugar and flour.
Anderson said "The people there have nothing. Their stores are empty..."
During their several days in Layrentiya, the musicians "established wonderful relationships with people who have been taught for all these years to hate Americans," he stated.
They started delivering medical supplies, food and Bibles, and the "people were so hungry, hungry, hungry to get Bibles," said Anderson
The seven had flown from Lavrentiya to Provedeniya, flew on to Gamble, then 24 miles from Nome the plane went down, he said.
Terry Day, a pilot for Bering Air, was on a scheduled flight which was about an hour late out of Nome, so he was on the ground in Gambell, at the same time as the Piper Navajo missionary plane, he said.
Day took off for Savoonga then the MARC Navajo took off for Nome. On the way from Savoonga to Nome with two passengers, Day "happened to see a splash" as he came by Sledge Island. "I thought it was a whale, because it was about 10 or 15 miles away. Of course I didn't know anything about this plane being in trouble," he said. About ten miles from Nome he received a call asking him to switch over to "Center" (Flight Service) frequency, which is unusual, he said. Center asked if he could deviate to Sledge Island and take a look because it had lost contact with an aircraft that was having some trouble and was going to try and land on the beach at Sledge Island.
"A light bulb went off in my head, and I said, 'I'll bet you that's what that splash was that I had seen five to eight minutes earlier.' You don't expect to see an airplane hit the water," said Day.
One miracle was that pilot Dave Cochran landed the plane as well as anyone ever could have under the circumstances, Anderson said. He belly flopped into the water, and there was no breakup of the plane. Another miracle was that they were carrying about 20 empty five gallon gas cans to be filled in the U.S. and returned to Provideniya.
Wharton popped out the emergency door, water gushed in, and they all took the five gallon cans with them, Anderson related.
Day immediately diverted and went to where he had seen the splash. It took about 5-10 minutes to find them because "they were extremely hard to spot" since they didn't have orange and yellow life vests or a raft, he said.
Still, from his altitude of 500 feet. Day said he could see at least three survivors who were waving their hands and splashing them in the water to be sure they had his attention.
Day circled them and let Nome know the three people in the water would need a helicopter right away because "these folks were cold and getting colder," he said.
"It was emotionally very encouraging to have that plane up there," although it was confusing because a helicopter or float plane wasn't arriving," said Anderson.
"I honestly believed that if I had left them, I don't think they would have been found; they were that hard to see in the water," he said.
Vie Olson from Baker Aviation was flying to Shishmaref and he said he had plenty of gas on board so he would be glad to help if he could.
Day didn't know how long it would take to get the helicopter there, and he said he wanted someone "right here looking at these folks, or they're going to get lost."
Olson formed up behind him and as soon as Olson had the people spotted. Day said he went on to Nome because his fuel was getting low.
Eric Pentilla of Evergreen Helicopters said he had finished dinner and was working on a project at home when Jay Langton from Nome Flight Service called. He said a plane was low on fuel and was trying for Sledge Island but would probably have to ditch in the ocean. Pentilla called his mechanic, Jerry Austin; they raced down to the hangar and got the helicopter going.
Doug Doyle of the Nome Volunteer Fire Department showed up and asked if they could use a firelighter, said Pentilla.
"I need the strongest, biggest one you've got," he said. By the time Randy Oles showed up Penttila had the helicopter cranked up, he jumped on and it took about 20 minutes to fly to the site, Penttila said. Vie kept them in sight," said Day, which was his biggest concern, "because they were really, really hard to spot."
When Penttila was over the scene and could see at least six people in the water, he responded to the ERA helicopter's offer of assistance.
ERA pilot Walt Greaves and his passenger, Dave Miles had been flying around with a magnetometer doing a geologic survey when they
heard over the airport frequency that a plane was down.
They knew another helicopter had gone out, but they had an hour and a half of fuel aboard and offered their assistance if necessary.
'I want you over here now because I'm going to need help,' Penttila said, Day related.
Greaves left his equipment on the mountain top arid flew out there.
With the arrival of the first helicopter came 40 minutes of "high drama," said Andcrson.
All of them almost didn't get into the plane because it was so difficult for the pilots to hover on the water's surface, and the victims getting water in their faces from the blades, he said. "Those barrels were absolute life savers. We could not have stayed in the water that long without hanging onto the barrels," said Anderson. Oles got out of the Evergreen helicopter and straddled the gear, reaching into the water to get a hold of two people, and he helped pull them into the aircraft, Austin said. Oles and Austin "climbed out on the skid and fished the people out, otherwise we had no other way of getting them out of the water," Penttila commented.
Oles had a survival suit on, but Austin was in tennies, jeans and a sweatshirt and he got soaked, he said. The MARC pilot had on a big heavy coat which was soaking wet so they couldn't pull him up, so Austin climbed out on the skid with Oles. Cochran couldn't move his arms because he was so stiff with cold and nearly unconscious. When Cochran lost consciousness, Anderson thought he had passed away, he admitted.
Austin said that several times Cochran was under water about 12 inches and they had the rope kinda wrapped around him and they would pull him back out. One minute he'd right at the skid and ready to go and the next minute a three foot swell would come and he'd drop down every time they'd get hold of him. It took quite a few tries, but we finally got him draped up over the skid," said Austin.
The two inside the aircraft were pretty hypothermic" and weren't able to help, so Austin and Oles worked the longest to get Cochran out of the water.
"It seemed like 20 minutes we were hovering over him," Penttila remarked.
By the time they finally got him up the skid, Austin and Oles were tired they knew they would never get him inside, so Penttila took off, they held him on the skid until they got to Sledge Island.
With Austin and Oles struggling on the skid with Cochran, Anderson said he and Cary Dietsche, in the craft, held onto the rope which did add that much more pull on Cochran. (And on Saturday Anderson mentioned he could feel the pain and strain in his shoulders.) Penttila and Austin had taken a sleeping bag which they threw over the MARC pilot on Sledge Island, because he was in the worst shape, the other guys huddled up to him. They left them there and went back for more, because they figured the ones in the water wouldn't last too much longer. Day unloaded his passengers, refueled and stationed himself about halfway to Sledge Island where he relayed information from the scene to Nome via radio. While Penttila was hovering over the water and picking people up, Greaves went down and found two people in the water, one of whom was a lady, he said.
His passenger on the mineral survey. Dave Miles, opened the sliding door and got out on the skid. "We hovered down and he grabbed the lady and held on to her," but she was so heavy because of being wet that Miles couldn't lift her into the helicopter, said Greaves.
It was more difficult than Miles thought to get that close to the water with the helicopter because the waves were coming up and going down about three feet, he said. If a wave comes up, one may get close to it, but when it goes down the helicopter can't follow because the tail rotor will get the wave and it will be a disaster.
So Miles tried to grab Barbara Anderson on the upswells with his one free hand because one hand was hanging on to the skid. She couldn't offer much in the way of help because she had been in the water so long she had no strength left and couldn't hang on. He said he couldn't get her into the helicopter because his arm had no leverage with him sitting on the skid. "I couldn't swing her up in, no way."
Miles grabbed hold of her as best he could, hooked onto her with his legs, and they picked her up out of the water and flew toward the beach on Sledge Island, said Greaves.
Miles was having trouble holding on to her, and "it seemed to be an awful long way to the island," because she was slipping and he couldn't hold on to her anymore. Within 50 yards of Sledge Island, he had Greaves go back down and Barbara dropped off five to ten feet into the water.
Anderson said that when the person on the skid of the helicopter had to drop his wife Barbara, it wasn't near enough to the shore so she could stand on anything. When she went down she swallowed a lot of water and now had no barrel to keep her floating.
After Miles dropped Barbara back in the water, Greaves flew him to the beach and he walked into the sea to get her, but the rocks were slippery and the water exceeded Miles' six feet, two inches. He pulled her in to shore by stages, took her blue coat off of her and let her black shirt absorb the heat of the sun. Miles said he helped her get her circulation going again, and she was "pretty happy to be out of the water."
Evergreen had picked up a lady and a "really big guy" who they couldn't
get in, so Oles stayed on the skid tube with him and Austin lay on the floor and held on to both of them.
On the next trip out the Evergreen crew couldn't see anyone else, so it shuttled the two survivors to Sledge Island, and on the way they spotted the last person from the air. There were about a dozen five gallon gas cans floating on the surface scattered over 200 meters, and the Evergreen crew thought he would be with the others, but his can was under water and he was further west.
When Evergreen got the third person out they stopped at the base of the island and picked up the girl and the passenger the ERA pilot had dropped and took them to the top of the Island, said Penttila.
He said he put four survivors on board his helicopter and ERA took three, and they flew to the hangar. "We are always happy when we have a happy ending like this," said Penltila. "A lot of times when I get called out, its a fatality. Very seldom do we get to go out and save lives like we did (Friday), so that's a pretty good feeling. It was fortunate that the wind conditions were ... out of the north. If it had been a south wind the seas would have probably been higher, and it would have been almost impossible to fish them out." The rescue crew here in town did an excellent job, commented Day. They had both ambulances and the fire department was down here waiting for them when they landed with plenty of blankets and got them to the hospital.
"The rescue people were absolutely phenomenal. They struggled and struggled and struggled with us to get us either into the helicopter or onto the skid," said Anderson. "They were extremely courageous in what they did, the pilots hovering at the water's level. We are, needless to say, eternally grateful for their hard work and their self-sacrificing attitude. It was like doing whatever it takes to gel something done, and they went beyond that. The ambulance people were very gracious and very concerned and very non-flustered."
Rev. Marv Eppard of the Nome Covenant Church received a phone call soon after the MARC plane went down, and when the rescue had occurred, he went to the hospital where there were two other clergymen,(Rev. Bill Welch and Rev. Jim Falsey) he said.
He observed that many caring people were responding and meeting needs in every direction.
When he was invited to do so, Pastor Marv visited the bedsides of the people who were in the hall ways or in temporary rooms. One of the things he noticed was the immediate and heroic response of the rescue people, and the ambulance people were immediately ready to give help with transportation.
"The hospital staff was phenomenal. I assume some extra people
came in, and there were one or two attendents at every bed side, giving attention to the needs of each patient," he said.
"When we got to the hospital we were met with extremely competent people in every regard," said Anderson. "Everyone cared for us and was very gentle. We're grateful for how they took care of us."
Pam Swedberg, wife of another MARC pilot, said they had warm bags packed around their bodies where they were the coldest, they were covered with a lot of warm blankets, and the nurses shared their own body warmth and energy to restore circulation to the hypothermic victims by massaging their extremities.
Later they were given hot beverages and food to further warm and sustain them.
While the survivors were being tended to, concerned people and the press brought dry clothing for them. Sorting the clothing was briefly accepted, but a member of the press was not allowed to be in the Chapel doorway during a medical emergency, and was directed out bodily.
When the passion of the moment cooled and KJCY radio station manager John McBride's diplomacy had prevailed, the press waited quietly in the administrative office area which was designated as the press staging area.
The hospital administrator, Maurice Ninham, having just read the disaster drill manual, was now more prepared to deal with the press, and the press with him. During the lengthening evening, he brought routine statements concerning the condition of the victims, cooperated with Pastor Eppard on coordinating places for the survivors to stay when five were released, as well as announcing that a baby girl had been bom amidst the medical disaster.
On Saturday Pastor Eppard arranged for the musicians to return to their homes in the Lower-48 while they also talked and prayed and he encouraged them in their time of tears, he said.
"There was a high sense of gratitude and thanksgiving. A lot of people would say, 'boy, were they lucky,' and they would immediately say they were blessed. They knew they had been protected and that God had worked a miracle," said the pastor.
"We lost 'things' which doesn't matter," Anderson stated. "A sound system, a keyboard, an amplifier, transformer, purses, wallets, 20 rolls of exposed film and a new camera," but a Granny Smith apple had been salvaged by one of the victims.
The things are replaceable, he said, "but the basic message is that God provided help for us in the water, help for us through the rescuers, and as God's Word says, we were "borne up on eagles' wings.'"
"We quoted a lot of scripture in the water, especially Brian Brasher who kept reminding us of God's presence, strength, and power, and we believed that," Anderson continued. "If anyone feels as if they are emotionally drowning, and they are just going under, the same powerful God who rescued us and brought us back, can bring people back to wholeness," he concluded.
