A coast guard crew from Airstation Sitka medevaced a 65-year-old woman from a cruise ship in Cross Sound on Sunday night. (8-21-22).
Around 5 p.m., the command center in Juneau received word from the cruise ship Zuiderdam that a woman on the vessel was in need of medical attention.
According to aircraft commander Lieutenant Erik Oredson, the woman had lost vision in one of her eyes due to an advanced eye infection, and needed to see a specialist within hours.
Oredson said his aircrew met the boat some 30 miles off Chichagof island, but low visibility thwarted rescue efforts.
“The fog lifted in the sound and moved out, but out over the actual open ocean, it was still super thick. So pretty much dense fog from the surface to about 1000 feet,” he said. “We got on scene about 7:30, And we made comms with the cruise ship, but we couldn’t actually see him down there. Getting down to the water and dense fog like that, and then conducting a medevac off the ship is obviously a very risky evolution. Hoisting itself is very risky to begin with.”
According to Oredson, the crew stayed airborne for almost an hour and a half deliberating, before deciding not to attempt the hoist. Without boats able to perform a rescue from the water, the crew returned to Sitka to wait for better conditions.
“Down here, we just have the air station. So it’s the Coast Guard is going to do medevac it’s almost always the helicopter, and that particular vessel doesn’t have I guess, the little transport boats that they use to bring people in and out from shore,” said Oredson. “So we came back refueled and then took off again about 9:45. And by that point, the cruise ship had actually entered Sitka Sound near St. Lazaria Island and completely in the clear, and so we went out and conducted the medevac.”
Oredson said the crew took off a second time around 10 o’ clock and was able to complete the rescue within 45 minutes. The patient was then transported to emergency medical personnel waiting in Sitka, and was later reported as being in stable condition.
