 A Tribute to the Missing
Harrowing details add to anger
Somber trips for families, survivors
Navy to survey ship's wreckage
Hopes fading, but search continues
Lee Cataluna: Tragedies a challenge to Island spirit
Previous stories
By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer
When Coast Guard helicopter pilot Jim Seeman heard that a Navy submarine had collided with a Japanese training ship last Friday, his first thought was, "I hope that rafts got deployed."
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| Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Robert Schmidt, left, and Lt. Jim Seeman share accounts of Friday’s rescue efforts. Seeman was the first helicopter pilot to arrive; Schmidt was on one of the first boats.
Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser |
Seeman knew there could be a lot of people in the water, some of them children.
"Any time there is potential loss of life, every operation is serious," Seeman said yesterday at the Coast Guard’s pier on Sand Island.
"But this has been a tough operation, this has particular poignancy, because there are schoolchildren involved. That has got to pull at anybody’s heart," said Seeman, who added that he has children of his own.
Members of the Coast Guard talked to the media yesterday about their search for survivors in the saga of training ship Ehime Maru.
Seeman flew nine hours the first night of the search, more than on any single mission since he began flying in 1986.
Gabe Sage, 24, of Portland, Ore., the rescue swimmer who was the first to reach the survivors, described the injured and diesel-coated victims huddling in life rafts.
And Capt. Jennifer Cook, commander of the state-of-the-art patrol boat Kittiwake, put the Kaua‘i-based vessel through its paces, doing a man-overboard drill and releasing and recovering a 17-foot inflatable boat from a well in its afterdeck.
Seeman and Sage got a little more rest last night as two Navy helicopters and a Navy P-3 submarine hunter aircraft, all three equipped with night vision, took over air duties after dark.
The Navy had the USS Port Royale, the USS Salvor and the torpedo recovery vessel Hawthorne plying a widening field of grid lines over the ocean, while the Coast Guard kept the Kittiwake and the 110-foot patrol boat Coast Guard cutter Kiska on the job.
With the search going into its fifth day, Seeman wasn’t ready to talk about ending it.
"In my career we have kept up searches where we know there were people involved and we can define the scene and you know they were on a well-equipped ship and there were life rafts and life jackets available," he said. "That extends the possibilities."
But Seeman was quick to add that the Ehime Maru scene is widening by the day. And, he said, "I think we have accounted for all the rafts on that fishing boat."
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