Coast Guard and good Samaritan respond to capsized vessel
Coast Guard News Service
11 Apr 2010 07:51 PM PDT
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – A good Samaritan rescued three people and the Coast Guard recovered a fourth person who was unresponsive after a pleasure craft capsized in the Nueces Bay, Saturday night.
A watchstander from Coast Guard Sector Corpus Christi received a call at 7:22 p.m. from a woman stating that their boat had become disabled with four persons on board. After declining commercial salvage, the family elected to stay the night on the boat. At 8:40 p.m., Sector Corpus Christi received a call from the Corpus Christi Police Department reporting that the boat had capsized with three people in the water.
Air Station Corpus Christi launched an MH-65C helicopter rescue crew to locate and recover the boaters. A good Samaritan picked up three survivors from the shallow but rough waters before departing the scene due to low fuel. The helicopter rescue crew lowered the rescue swimmer to the water at the location of the capsized boat. The rescue swimmer located the fourth person trapped underneath the boat. The 53 year-old man was airlifted to Spohn Memorial hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
All four survivors were wearing life jackets or had access to flotation devices. (Check my math: wouldn’t that be three survivors and one victim?)
This may be the first death attributable to the MSAP:
The MSAP is the result of an effort enacted by Congress in 1982. It directed the Commandant to “review Coast Guard policies and procedures for towing and salvage of disabled vessels in order to further minimize the possibility of Coast Guard competition or interference with…commercial enterprise.” The review was directed because of congressional concern that CoastGuard resources were being used unnecessarily to provide non-emergency assistance to disabled vessels that could be adequately performed by the private sector.
The only details I have right now are what I learned from the news sources, including one that mentions that the water where the boat was disabled was too shallow for a USCG boat to operate in, perhaps less than 4′ deep. If that is true, then that was certainly a factor in the SARC’s decision not to launch, because the only rescue resource at his disposal would have been a helicopter, and no one is going to be air-lifting 4 uninjured adults from a small boat simply because they refuse to pay for a non-emergency tow. On the other hand, did the USCG set up a comm schedule and closely monitor the situation? Did the boater have a VHF radio? What was the weather forecast?
As usual, there is more to this story than is being reported, but the take-away isn’t good: Boater calls the USCG for help; USCG declines to help and defers to commercial assistance; boater refuses commercial assistance; one guy dies…
My condolences to the family.
more:
http://www.caller.com/news/2010/apr/12/coast-guard-policy-was-followed-in-case-of/
http://www.boattest.com/Resources/view_news.aspx?NewsID=4093
