You win some you loose some

I work in the US Coast Guard. Savings lives and property is what we try to do best. Its our job. I am a Aviaation Electronics Technician and I fly as a helicopter mechanic. Some of you have had to see our helicopters buzzing by.

4:30am EST Dec 08, 2004 My beeper alarm goes off. I am walking to the hangar deck comming from the gym. Once the alarm went off, I had a gut fealing "this is the real deal" I pay close attention to the announcment, "over due vessel Marathon"

We get in the air and we are talking to Sector Key West, they inform us that there has been a report of a vessel on fire at a specific location. So we fly directly towards that location, low and behold a 70ft shrimper is totally engulfed with flames. We fly over them, and roughly 500yds from the boat, we spot TWO people in the water!

We get ready to get them out of the water and into the helictoper, and this point my heart is pounding at 120 beats. The rescue swimmer is changing into his wetsuit, and there is a lot of stuff going on over the radios. It is easy to forget what we are there for.

I spot one of the survivors, hes was flopping around. One either unconcious or deciesed. I was thinking "oh man, this aint good" We check out the second survivor, hes barely hanging on to dear life in one of those life rings.

We start to lower the rescue swimmer, unable to get a pulse in the water, and he informed us there was absolutley no responce at all and that his head kept falling underwater. He swims to the other survivor, and as he aproached him, the survivor let go of everything and started going underwater. The swimmer cought him just in time, put him in the basket and I hoist him out of the water.

Once in the cabin I help the poor fella to climb out of the basket, and lay him in the helicopter. he was 70yrs old, he was pretty shaken up by the situation, and trembling cold. Hypothermia was starting to kick in.

They were both in the water for over an hour. There was nothing we could do for the other person. A Coast Guard cutter picked him up. We took the only survivor to Marathon Airport were there was a ambulance awaiting for him. I can safley assume he will be in good shape.

He was lucky, they had an EPIRB, we had a Coast Guard cutter, a Falcon Jet and a Dolphin Helicopter searching for them. The Falcon Jet was the first to spot them, and we came in to pick the people out of the water. The Coast Guard cutter picked up the deciesed person.

Sad story, we saved one life, but one was lost.