Deadliest Sea (28 page)

It was just about 10:00
A.M
. when the larger helicopter began in-flight refueling. At 10:15
A.M
., the Jayhawk crew overheard the
Munro
order the Dolphin back to the ship: The search was over. The
Warrior
had recovered the final three
Alaska Ranger
crew members—all of them deceased. Now all forty-seven people were accounted for.

At 10:18
A.M
. the Jayhawk’s fuel tanks were full. When the Dolphin arrived back at the ship, a game of musical chairs commenced like no one had ever played before. As McLaughlin and Bonn flew the Jayhawk alongside the cutter, the Dolphin hov
ered over the flight deck and lowered rescue swimmer O’Brien Starr-Hollow to the ship. It was too dangerous for the Jayhawk crew to hoist their swimmer from the ship with the smaller helicopter perched on the flight deck, and the larger helo didn’t want to spend time and fuel waiting for the Dolphin to be shut down and moved into the hangar. Instead, the smaller aircraft remained airborne.

After Starr-Hollow was safely on deck, the 65 crew pulled the little red helicopter away from the boat, and then the 60 Jayhawk came into a hover over the lurching flight deck for a final time. DeBolt lowered the hoist cable, and Starr-Hollow clipped the hook into his harness. They’d go back to St. Paul together, as a team.

N
OT LONG AFTER THE FIRST GROUP
of fishermen had been lowered to the cutter, there was a piped announcement that the ship was looking for donations for the rescued men. Coasties filed into the mess deck with spare T-shirts, sweatpants, boat shoes and sneakers. The ship’s store was opened up to the men. They could grab a hat, a sweatshirt, and—best of all for many—free cigarettes. Some of the
Munro
’s crew gave the fishermen snacks from their own shore-bought stashes. By late morning, most of the first-rescued fishermen were sprawled out deep in the ship, dressed in crew hand-me-downs or brand-new Coast Guard–branded sweats.

As the hours passed, Doc Weiss kept checking in with the fishermen. Kenny Smith was sleeping. It had taken him a couple of hours to be able to move around on his own. Even once he could, he complained of numbness. There were quite a few guys with bruises and some sprains. A few men complained of what sounded to Weiss like swimmer’s ear. But overall, the men were doing remarkably well.

Except for the very last fisherman, David Silveira.

They declared him dead at 11:00
A.M
.

After several cycles of CPR on the floor of the cold vestibule behind the hangar, they had moved Silveira into the
Munro
’s sick bay. They’d treated all the other fishermen on the mess deck, but Weiss didn’t want to upset the
Ranger
’s crew—or the
Munro
’s own young seamen—with the sight of someone who was so far gone. From the sick bay, Weiss called the on-duty doctor at the air station in Kodiak. Keep going, the M.D. had encouraged the
Munro
’s corpsman. It can’t hurt. But when Weiss called back close to an hour later, he was told to stop. Silveira’s core temperature was at 83°F. They’d been trying to resuscitate him for seventy minutes already. It was over.

Weiss helped close Silveira’s body into a green vinyl body bag. The Coasties brought the body to a sheltered spot outside the XO’s cabin and laid it down. Then they assigned a crewman to stand watch over the dead officer.

T
HROUGHOUT THE RESCUE PROCESS
, Combat had been reporting the number of fishermen lowered to the
Munro
to District Command in Juneau. The last four men—including David Silveira—brought their recorded total up to twenty-two. Just before 11:00
A.M
., District called off the search. All forty-seven people who had been on board the
Alaska Ranger
were accounted for. The cutter
Munro
had reported twenty-two men—thirteen in the first Jayhawk pickup, five from the Dolphin, and four more recovered by the Jayhawk on that helo’s return to the rescue scene. Meanwhile, there were twenty-five people, including three deceased, on board the
Warrior
. At 10:57
A.M
., District directed the
Munro
to accompany the
Warrior
back to Dutch Harbor, where both ships would transfer their survivors to waiting medical personnel.

Soon after the second life raft was unloaded onto the FCA trawler, the rescued
Ranger
crew were asked to write their names on a sheet of paper, and those names were passed off to District personnel. A few dozen miles to the north, a Coastie on the
Munro
made a list of names of the
Ranger
crew on the cutter. Meanwhile, SAR officers in Juneau had been working to get a full list of the
Alaska Ranger
’s crew from the Fishing Company of Alaska. By noontime, the Juneau Coasties were comparing the lists. They’d recorded that the
Munro
had twenty-two men, but when they looked at the names, there were only twenty-one. Where was a Japanese crew member named Satoshi Konno? His name didn’t appear on the list supplied by either ship.

It was just after 1:00
P.M
. when District informed the ships that Konno was unaccounted for. There’d been a miscount. Though crew on the
Munro
’s bridge had counted just twelve survivors lowered to the deck in the Jayhawk’s first load, Combat recorded the number they’d heard the helo’s own crew report: thirteen. It was that number that was passed on to Juneau. Now everybody knew that one man was still missing. The
Munro
was on course toward the
Warrior
when Captain Lloyd ordered his engineers to make best speed back toward the disaster site.

F
OURTEEN HUNDRED MILES AWAY
, in the windowless control center at Coast Guard headquarters in downtown Juneau, SAR personnel were gathering information on the missing fisherman—his age, height, weight, and the estimated time he’d been in the Bering Sea—and plugging it into their modeling program. Developed by the Coast Guard specifically to find lost mariners, the computer software uses on-scene weather data, including real-time information about sea currents, to calculate the most
probable drift pattern of a person lost at sea and recommend search grids to optimize the chances that a man overboard will be found alive.

Given different variables, the personal data on a lost individual are used to calculate likely survival times. Satoshi Konno was a thin man in his fifties. His age was a disadvantage, and so was his build. By far the fisherman’s worst enemy, though, was time. At the moment the Coasties realized Konno was still missing, the Japanese man had been in the water for at least eight hours. The sea temperature was 36°F.

The
Munro
made it to the sinking site around 2:00
P.M
. with a search plan ready. Crew members were posted at the ship’s rails to scan the seas while the massive cutter methodically traced search lines across several square miles of open ocean.

Dolphin pilots TJ Schmitz and Greg Gedemer were eager to provide more eyes on the waves. But the 65 was grounded. Byron Carrillo’s fall from the basket had been labeled a Class A Mishap, a designation used for an accident that results either in a death, or in total loss of the aircraft. The service’s rules for that classification are strict—neither the aircraft nor the crew could fly again until an investigation was complete.

The Jayhawk crew had been told the search was over and left the
Munro
just before 11:00
A.M
. It took them just over an hour to fly back to St. Paul Island. They landed the aircraft at 12:20
P.M
. By the time they pulled the helo into the hangar and drove the snowy mile back to the LORAN Station, the Coasties more than a thousand miles away in Juneau knew something was wrong.

In the pilots’ lounge on St. Paul, the phone rang once again.

There’d been a mistake in the count. One man was still out there.

McLaughlin and his crew had eight and a half hours of flying time on them. If they’d been the only air crew available, their commander could have given them the thumbs-up to go out again. But another crew was on standby. Pilots Shawn Tripp and Zach Koehler would fly the 60 Jayhawk back to the scene.

O
N BOARD THE CUTTER
M
UNRO
,
the news about the missing man quickly trickled down to the
Ranger
crew. One of the Coasties was making rounds among the rescued fishermen, asking questions. Had anyone seen Satoshi Konno abandon ship? How about in the water? Did anyone remember what he was wearing?

At first, Julio Morales had no idea who the officers were talking about. “Who’s that?” he asked one of the other fishermen. “Who’s Satoshi Konno?” The name didn’t sound familiar at all.

“The fish master. It’s the fish master,” somebody told him.

Julio had seen the fish master in the wheelhouse before he’d abandoned ship. By that time, most people were already in the ocean. The boat was listing and the water was almost up to the deck surrounding the bridge. While everyone else was running around in their bulky suits trying to figure out how best to get off the ship, the fish master had been sitting quietly inside. He seemed calm and was smoking a cigarette. His suit was unzipped down to his waist. He didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry to save his own life.

T
HE FISHERMEN WERE INVITED TO SEND
brief e-mails home. They couldn’t make any phone calls, though. The authorities were still confirming the names of the deceased and working to notify the families. Until then, the crew could only communi
cate with their own family members by e-mails, which were to be reviewed by the Coast Guard.

Ryan Shuck sat down in one of the Coastie’s bunk rooms to write to his longtime girlfriend, Kami. “The boat went down early this morning,” Ryan typed. “Most of us were rescued by the coast guard they have been great. I’m on a cutter now we’re searching for 1 guy still. I’ll call when I get to dutch. I’m ok don’t worry. Love always ryan.”

The
Munro
was still tracing search patterns for Konno on Monday morning when Captain Lloyd gathered the
Alaska Ranger
’s crew together on the mess deck. The captain had a piece of paper in his hands.

“I have the names of the deceased,” he said.

Julio’s cousin Marco had been in the first load of fishermen rescued by the 60 Jayhawk. When Julio reached the ship, Marco was already warmed up and doing fine. Neither man knew what had happened to their other cousin, Byron.

Julio had a bad feeling. But as the captain read the list out loud, he didn’t hear his cousin’s name. It was the ship’s top officers who had died, Julio realized. The captain, the mate, and the chief engineer.

Byron’s okay, Julio thought for a minute. We’re all okay.

But there had been a name on the captain’s list that he didn’t recognize. It sounded like Brian. Julio didn’t remember meeting a Brian on the
Ranger
. He asked to see the names.

He took the paper in his hands and there it was: Byron Carrillo.

Julio felt like his ears were ringing. He heard himself screaming. “No. No.” The other men were looking at him. Julio was sobbing. Some of the other men had tears in their eyes, too. Julio knew that most of them didn’t really know his cousin.
Four days wasn’t long enough to know him, but they’d liked him well enough. He was a pretty friendly guy, a good worker. Now he was the new guy who was dead.

T
HE
A
LASKA
W
ARRIOR
WAS HEADED BACK
to Dutch Harbor. A couple of the other FCA trawlers were searching for Konno near the sinking site. And Captain Scott knew the Coast Guard was out there, completing calculated search patterns with their plane, helicopter, and cutter all scouring the seas hour after hour.

As the
Warrior
steamed east, Ed Cook went down to the factory, to where the bodies were. The crew had put a white blanket over Captain Pete. Danny was covered with a red one. Ed had watched the CPR attempts on his brother. But there was nothing, no sign of life. Danny had been in the water too long. Ed knew it. His brother’s lungs were full of water. So much water. It had poured out of him when the crew pumped again and again at his huge chest.

Ed peeled the cover back from his brother’s face. Danny had been facedown in the water when they pulled him out. His eyes had been closed. Even in those first few awful minutes, he’d looked like he might just be asleep. Just sleeping, that’s all.

Ed stared at his brother. He looked peaceful. He even had a little smile on his face. His lips were pressed together, closed. That was unusual, Ed thought. His brother was a nonstop talker. Now, for once, he was quiet.

Danny looked enormous under his blanket, especially next to the captain. Ed wrapped his arms around his brother’s body. He kissed him on the cheek, and then on the lips.

“Daniel, I love you,” he said out loud. “I will miss you every day of my life.”

T
he sky was black as the
Munro
entered Iliuliuk Bay. The ship steamed for the cluster of lights that marked the village of Unalaska, then swerved to starboard, toward the Coast Guard pier. The
Munro
’s crew had searched for fish master Satoshi Konno for twenty-six hours. There’d been lots of debris—fishing net and buoys, a couple of life rings—and a half-mile-wide oil slick. The rescue swimmer on the new Jayhawk crew from St. Paul had been lowered on the hoist line to puncture and deflate the empty life rafts so they wouldn’t offer false hope to the next group of searchers. Like the seamen posted on deck as the
Munro
zigzagged up and down the ocean, the helo crew had seen no trace of the Japanese fisherman.

Erin Lopez was back on duty in Combat, studying the radar for any traffic in the channel and supervising the more junior op
erations specialists as they plotted the ship’s approach into Dutch Harbor. Lopez had taken charge of developing the
Munro
’s search patterns for Konno, working with District Command in Juneau to be sure the ship’s plans and those of the Coast Guard aircraft complemented one another. As the ship neared the pier, she went up to the deck so she could watch the fishermen go ashore.

In the hours after the last men were lowered to the ship, Lopez had talked to some of the survivors. The room she shared with a handful of other female crew members was right across from the rec deck where the men were resting. She’d poked her head in there and introduced herself, offering the guys popcorn and PowerBars from her private stash. A few of the survivors said they remembered her voice. They’d heard it coming over the radio in the
Ranger
’s wheelhouse before they abandoned ship.

Now most of the fishermen were on the mess deck, waiting to get off the boat. Out the portholes, they could see that there were a handful of vehicles next to the pier, including an ambulance to transport the body of David Silveira.

As the
Munro
’s deckhands raised the aluminum gangway up to the side of the ship, Lopez moved to the rail. It was after midnight, but Captain Lloyd was there, along with Luke Cutburth and Jimmy Terrell. As the rescued crewmen stepped off the boat, Lopez shook each of their hands. A couple of the guys leaned down to give her a hug. Then she watched them file quietly off the ship and disappear into the cold night.

W
ITHIN A DAY OF THE SINKING
, the Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) convened a joint Marine Board of Investigation into the loss of the
Alaska Ranger
. The Marine Board is the Coast Guard’s most formal type of accident analysis, most often reserved for incidents that result in
multiple deaths, as well as the total loss of a vessel. It had been seven years since the Coast Guard’s last Marine Board, which investigated the disappearance of the
Arctic Rose,
the head-and-gut boat that sank in the Bering Sea in April 2001 and cost the lives of fifteen men.

The
Alaska Ranger
’s Marine Board began questioning witnesses on the morning of Friday, March 28, in a conference room at the Grand Aleutian hotel. The board was headed by Coast Guard Captain Mike Rand, then finishing out his career at Coast Guard headquarters in Washington, D.C. Assisting him were three other Coast Guard officers, one from Anchorage, the other two from the East Coast. The four-man NTSB team was led by a young maritime accident investigator named Liam LaRue. Though the fact-finding phase of the investigation would be a joint effort between the Coast Guard and NTSB, each agency would ultimately prepare its own independent report on the disaster.

Marine accidents represent the smallest slice of the pie of all transportation casualties investigated each year by the NTSB, the federal agency charged with examining the causal factors of airline crashes, train derailments, and highway disasters. LaRue was in a good position to lead the investigation. A 2000 graduate of the Coast Guard Academy, he’d spent two years as a deck watch officer on a cutter that had patrolled in the Bering. He then served for three years as a Coast Guard marine inspector before joining the NTSB. In his time with the agency, LaRue had worked on a number of high-profile incidents, including the capsizing of the passenger vessel
Ethan Allen
in Lake George, New York, in 2005, which resulted in the deaths of twenty-one elderly vacationers, and the collision of the freighter
Cosco Busan
with San Francisco’s Bay Bridge in 2007.

“This investigation is intended to determine the cause of the casualty to the extent possible,” Captain Rand explained in his
opening statement, “and…to obtain information for the purpose of preventing or reducing the effects of similar casualties in the future.”

The board would look for evidence of any “incompetence, misconduct, unskillfulness, or willful violation of the law” that may have contributed to the accident, Rand said. Though the board would examine the decisions and actions of Coast Guard marine inspectors and rescuers, he identified a single “party of interest” to the investigation: the Fishing Company of Alaska. Before calling the first witness, the Coast Guard captain asked everyone in the conference room to stand and observe a moment of silence for the five men who had lost their lives just days before.

Julio Morales testified on the third day. Along with the other rescued men on the
Munro,
he’d been brought by van back to the Grand Aleutian hotel after arriving in Dutch Harbor. The guys who’d been picked up by the
Warrior
were already partying. There’d been another open tab. But this time, the company’s rule against alcohol had been lifted. The men could drink as much as they wanted and they’d each been given a wad of spending cash, courtesy of FCA. Some of the guys said the company was trying to butter them up. Julio had more than a few drinks. He kept seeing Byron’s face at night—but with enough beer, he could fall asleep.

Julio had been told he had to stay for the investigation. He missed the funeral. The family was Catholic, so the service was held right away. The day after they got off the Coast Guard ship, Julio had gotten a call from the cops in Dutch Harbor. They wanted him to come to the airport and identify his cousin’s body. Julio didn’t want to do it and asked Marco to go instead. The police came and picked Marco up, and brought him to the airport, where Byron’s body was waiting to be flown to the medical examiner in Anchorage. Julio waited at the hotel.

On the witness stand, Julio told the Marine Board about the
holes in his suit, the rip at the seam that had allowed water to leak in. The investigators asked Julio about his training. Had he ever put on the survival suit before the night of the sinking? Yes, Julio said. He’d practiced getting into the suit soon after he’d first boarded the ship. His cousin Byron had done the same when he joined the crew a few weeks later. Other than that, though, there’d been no training. No one told them how to abandon ship, how to board the life rafts from the boat, or what to do once they were in the water.

The next day, the board called fisheries observer Gwen Rains. They questioned her about the safety checklist she’d filled out when she first boarded the
Ranger
. “Did you find any discrepancies during your inspection?” Gwen was asked. There were several things she felt that the ship needed to address, she responded, but the boat did have the current Coast Guard safety decal required to sail with an observer, and none of the boat’s problem areas were on her no-go list.

She gave some examples: “Like, the watertight doors, do they seal properly? No, they don’t,” Gwen said. “Are there fire extinguishers in every corridor that are in good and serviceable condition? No, they’re not. There were several things like that.”

Gwen recalled the safety drill carried out less than a week before the sinking. Unlike in other drills she’d witnessed as an observer, the men on the
Ranger
didn’t actually put on their survival suits or fire suits, or act out emergency scenarios with the full crew. Instead, they mustered in the wheelhouse, and the emergency squad members reported to the officers where they
would
be in different emergency situations. There was no discussion about what to do in an abandon ship scenario.

“What else is there that we need to know?” Rand asked at the end of Gwen’s testimony.

“I feel very strongly that a bad situation was made worse by
people not knowing what to do. By people not being trained,” she answered.

The Marine Board took seven days of testimony in Dutch Harbor and, two days later, reconvened at the Hilton hotel in downtown Anchorage. Jayhawk pilot Brian McLaughlin and his wife, Amy, had flown from Kodiak, along with three crew members of the 65 Dolphin: pilot TJ Schmitz, rescue swimmer Abe Heller, and flight mechanic Al Musgrave. The primary goal of the investigation was to determine why the
Ranger
sank and why so many people failed to abandon ship safely into life rafts. But the board would also look at the Coast Guard’s response: What went well; what went wrong; and how could it have gone better.

It wasn’t the first time the Coast Guard rescuers had told their stories. When the
Munro
arrived in Dutch Harbor with the
Ranger
fishermen, the crew of the 65 Dolphin packed their things and left the ship. The next day they were flown to the Coast Guard outpost in Cold Bay, where they were met by a team of experienced Alaskan aviators who would conduct an internal fact-finding mission into how one of the shipwrecked men had fallen from the rescue basket. Each 65 crew member was questioned about Byron Carrillo independently, and then they talked together about how things might have gone differently. Back on the
Munro,
each Coastie had been given drug and alcohol tests, which is standard Coast Guard practice after any major mishap. All the men’s tests were negative.

Not long after the men were back home in Kodiak, the air station commander announced a safety stand-down—a meeting where all the rescuers involved in the
Alaska Ranger
case would recount what happened and discuss how and why they made the decisions they did. The gathering was held at the movie theater on base and was open to the entire air station—and to any family members who wanted to attend.

It was crowded as Amy McLaughlin walked into the warm theater. Framed film posters hung on the walls alongside signs for the weekday, kid-friendly screenings where she sometimes saw new releases with her young daughter in tow. Amy was curious to hear more about what had happened on the case. But mostly she just wanted to support Brian. She saw a few of the other wives there, too.

Brian had called Amy from St. Paul that Easter night. They’d had a pretty big case, he told her. He sounded exhausted, too tired to tell the whole story. It wasn’t until she saw the news the next day that Amy realized just how huge the rescue had been. She noticed that most of the headlines focused on the five who died. Of course, it was heartbreaking for those families, but the endless spotlight on those who hadn’t survived made Amy feel bad for the pilots, and for all the guys on those aircrews. She wished the media would concentrate on the ones who’d been saved. It was hard for Brian, Amy knew, to accept the fact that they’d left people behind. He’d never had to leave anybody before. He seemed concerned that she know his crew had done everything they could out there—and she did.

One by one, the Coast Guard rescuers stood before the familiar faces in the crowded movie house and told their stories. They presented the rescue on a timeline: the 60 guys went first, followed by the 65 guys, then back to the 60 crew. They talked for more than an hour, and then took questions. Amy was interested in hearing what the other pilots asked about the decision making. It was by far the most intense rescue Brian had ever experienced. Hearing her husband describe all the lights in the water, the high seas and winds, and the disorienting snow squalls made her feel uneasy. But mostly she felt proud.

The
Munro
was back on routine patrol in the Bering Sea at the time of the safety stand-down in Kodiak. But the ship’s
crucial role in the rescue was duly recounted by the aviators, including Brian McLaughlin. He had already offered his appreciation personally. On the morning of Monday, March 24, as the
Munro
was still tracing search patterns across the Bering Sea, Ops Boss Jimmy Terrell had received an e-mail message from the aircraft commander: