JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska - Airborne saviors of the Alaska Air National Guard had a busy weekend, conducting separate rescues of an infant boy and a father and his two sons.
A two-week old infant with life-threatening pneumonia symptoms was medevaced early Saturday from the village of New Stuyahok to Anchorage by Alaska Air National Guard rescue personnel.
The baby boy was coughing, vomiting and having trouble breathing. The village's medical provider was able to stabilize him enough for the flight to Anchorage and the child's parents both traveled with him.
The Alaska Rescue Coordination Center was contacted at 1 a.m. and its personnel requested support from the Alaska Air National Guard's rescue squadrons. The Guard responded by launching an HC-130 King aircraft from the 211th Rescue Squadron and an HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter from the 210th Rescue Squadron, each with a team of Guardian Angel rescue personnel from the 212th Rescue Squadron on board, from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson.
New Stuyahok is about 30 miles northeast of Dillingham. The round trip required more than five hours of flight time for the aircraft, and the helicopter refueled twice on the 500-mile trip. The village was overcast, and there was poor weather on the route.
The Guard got involved after Bristol Bay Health Care Corporation contacted Guardian Flight, a civilian air ambulance company that was unable to respond due to the unlit, gravel runway, which is closed to aircraft over 10,000 pounds.
Guardian contacted the U.S. Coast Guard, which would not have rescue assets available until the morning. The Coast Guard contacted the Rescue Coordination Center, which requested support from the Alaska Air National Guard.
The HH-60 landed at Providence Hospital's helicopter landing pad and the child and his parents were transported via ambulance to the Alaska Native Medical Center at 9:30 a.m.
The rescue of the chilled father, 40 and his sons, ages 11 and 13, occurred after the man's wife called Alaska State Troopers when they were overdue at their pick-up point at 7:30 p.m.
The trio were medevaced from Crows Pass Trail at 12:30 a.m.
The troopers called the Alaska Rescue Coordination Center, which requested that LifeMed Alaska, a medevac company, launch a search for the overdue hikers. LifeMed typically transports patients from a known location to a medical facility, but the Alaska Air National Guard rescue alert crew was still on crew rest from an earlier rescue that day. LifeMed couldn't find the hikers, who wore jeans and sneakers with no other weather protection.
Once Alaska Air National Guard rescue alert crews could be contacted after regulation-required crew rest, they were called at 10 p.m. to search for the missing hikers. The Guard responded by launching an HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter from the 210th Rescue Squadron with a team of Guardian Angel rescue personnel from the 212th Rescue Squadron on board, from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson.
They spotted a campfire and landed the HH-60 about 200 yards away. Two Guardian Angels departed the helicopter and found the uninjured, cold hikers near the campfire.
The hikers were one mile from Eagle Glacier, about 15 miles into the 26-mile hike that begins in Eagle River Valley and ends in Girdwood.
"Outdoor enthusiasts should travel with survival gear when they venture out, and they need to be prepared to spend the night, even if they don't plan to," said Lt. Col. John Morse, deputy director of the Alaska Rescue Coordination Center.
The AKRCC recommends that even day trips be well planned.
"Talk to people who have done it before, do your research, and know what to expect," said Morse. "Our weather can be unpredictable, conditions change, injuries happen, and people get lost," he said.
Most importantly, say rescue workers, if you are headed for the outdoors, always travel with a personal locator beacon so that you may be found if you get lost. Upon activation, it receives 100 percent of attention from RCC personnel and it directs them to the beacon's location within minutes.
During the past 19 years, Alaska Guard Airmen successfully completed more than 5,000 search and rescue missions and are credited with saving more than 2,000 lives.