The Untold Story of Hurricane Harvey’s First Urban Air Rescue Mission

[DGUtley]

The Untold Story of Hurricane Harvey’s First Urban Air Rescue Mission

When Harvey began its assault on Houston, the only help in the sky for thousands of stranded Texans were four U. S. Coast Guardsmen out of Mobile, Alabama.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 27, 2017, 0300

Fifty feet above Pasadena, a working-class city on the southeast border of Houston, Coast Guard rescue swimmer Tyler Gantt crouched in the cabin of a hovering helicopter and readied himself for the first mission of his career. Violent gusts from Hurricane Harvey knocked the aircraft in every direction and drove rain through the seams of its fuselage. It felt like a roller coaster that could jump the tracks at any second. The moment aviation maintenance technician Chris Flores slid open the side door, water began pouring into the cabin and a bolt of lightning lit up the scene below. Cars up to their roofs in water lined the streets. Power lines and trees whipped in the wind. Holy crap, Gantt thought. This is it.

By the week’s end, Harvey would dump more rain than any other hurricane on record in the United States. Rescue efforts would be equally historic, carried out by more than thirty-one thousand first responders from across the country. But at the moment, Gantt and his crew were the only help in the skies over Houston.

This is their story:

https://www.esquire.com/news-politic...-guard-rescue/


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[Peter1469]

Rescue swimmers are some serious bad-asses. One told me once that when he was rescuing pilots in the ocean he would approach them and tell them not to struggle (pilot scared to death, if struggles could drown them both) and on at least one occasion he had to hit the pilot on the head with the butt of his combat knife to knock him out because the guy was spazing out so much.