Waves of 6 to 8 feet in darkness, 140 miles from shore
Coast Guard rescue swimmer Josh Law, 24, pulled 16 people out of the Pacific Ocean during a nighttime helicopter rescue carried out about 140 miles off the coast of Mexico’s Baja peninsula. Law reached them by following a searchlight from the aircraft, working in darkness and in waves of 6 to 8 feet.
Law was strapped into a harness and lowered into the rough Pacific Ocean at night, far off the Mexican coast. The force of the helicopter’s blades pummeled the water, whipping up spray and turbulence around him.
The noise and the darkness left the Coast Guard rescue swimmer without sight or hearing. His only guide was the searchlight from the helicopter, and he followed it in the hope that it would lead him to more than two dozen people in the cold water.
Waves of 6 to 8 feet (1.8 to 2.4 meters) hit him. The people he was sent to retrieve were some 140 miles (225 kilometers) off the coast of Mexico’s Baja peninsula, and Law would personally rescue 16 of them.
Law described the operation in his first interview since the rescue, with The Associated Press. “I was experiencing exhaustion at that point,” he said. “We had very little sleep. But what I was experiencing was nothing compared to what they were at that point … I just had to keep that in mind.”
Law drew a direct comparison between the fatigue of his own team, short on sleep, and the worse condition of the people in the water, saying he had to keep their condition in mind.
Over the next two hours in the predawn hours of Oct. 16, Law was the sole person in the water who would get the people whose boat had capsized to safety. Eleven others were never found.
The rescue began with a mayday call around 1 a.m. Someone said their boat was sinking in the middle of the Pacific Ocean off Ensenada, Mexico. Within minutes, the alarm sounded at the U.S. Coast Guard Air Station in Ventura, northwest of Los Angeles, rousing Law and his colleagues from sleep. Helicopter pilot Lt. Miyako Miller checked flying conditions and planned a route over the ocean south of the U.S. border. Law prepared his dry suit, fins and medical items, then put on a harness that would be hooked to a cable. By 2 a.m., the crew of four was taking off from the station in Ventura.
Miller wore night vision goggles to help her fly in the dark. She said she relied on the stars, with no moonlight that night. As the crew approached the reported sinking, Miller spotted a tiny flicker of light in the distance. She then saw what looked like debris floating in the water, though it was difficult to distinguish what it was, and navigated over the area until the helicopter hovered about 40 feet (12 meters) above the water.
Miller said, “I’m doing my best to maintain my references externally by looking outside through the night vision goggles,” adding that meanwhile “the flight mechanic is telling me where to position the helicopter.” Some 250 miles (400 kilometers) southwest of Ensenada is Guadalupe Island, a biosphere reserve well known for great white sharks.
Law described the operation as taking place along a remote route frequented by migrant smuggling boats. A federal investigation was examining what the boat was doing and where it originated. It was unclear whether the vessel had gotten lost, had engine failure, was swept out to sea or was meant to go that far. Only pieces of the boat were found. The Mexican consulate said all who were rescued were Mexican. The Coast Guard said U.S. Customs and Border Protection was investigating and interviewing the survivors, but the agency did not respond to multiple inquiries on whether the vessel was a migrant smuggling boat.
Law said he did not think about what was in the water as he hooked himself to the cable and zipped into the ocean in his harness. There was no time to waste. His dry suit provided some warmth, but he knew the others had already spent hours in hypothermic-temperature waters. A searchlight from the crew allowed him to catch a glimpse of the people in the water.
The people were scattered across a wide area. Some wore life vests with tiny lights that produced the flicker Miller first spotted, while others clung to one another, buoys and pieces of wreckage, shivering and treading water to stay afloat. Law said he swam to them, flipped them onto their backs, put his arm over them and pulled them up using the “buddy tow” technique. Kicking his legs to swim, he carried them to the spot where he could signal the flight mechanic to lower a basket.
Law described the coordination: “With one hand, I’m holding the survivor. With the other, I am signaling to the helicopter and working with the device,” he said. He placed the people into the basket one by one. The basket was then hoisted repeatedly to the helicopter, where the crew got each person into the aircraft before lowering it again. Law’s dry suit slowly filled to his knees with water, feeling like weights as he battled heavy waves while swimming back and forth.
With a packed helicopter and dwindling fuel, the crew decided to head to the Coast Guard station in San Diego, where ambulances waited. On the flight, Law treated three people with what he described as “bad” wounds, staunching the bleeding. Several of the injuries were “consistent with shark bites,” and the Coast Guard provided life-saving first aid, the agency said in a statement Saturday.
Customs and Border Protection officers went to a hospital and said they would process the survivors according to immigration laws after they were medically cleared. Nearly half of those rescued had since been returned to Mexico, U.S. officials said. Law and his crew returned to Ventura that morning; Law said it was by far the longest rescue operation he had ever done.
The search for the 11 others continued for another two days without success, and the Coast Guard called off its search late Sunday. The Coast Guard, Mexico and the U.S. Navy searched more than 2,441 square miles (6,322 square kilometers) for a combined 89 hours.
The Associated Press reported that migrants are increasingly turning to the risky alternative offered by smugglers: traveling by sea to avoid heavily guarded land borders. Small boats called pangas leave Baja at night and sometimes travel hundreds of miles north.
The account offers a first-hand description of Coast Guard helicopter rescue work far offshore: a swimmer sent into heavy seas at night, cut off from sight and sound, following a searchlight toward a group in the water 140 miles from the Mexican coast.