Two weeks ago today, a helicopter crew from Coast Guard Air Station Savannah medically evacuated a mariner from the container ship Hanjin Rio de Janeiro about 12 miles off our coast.
Petty Officer 3rd Class Anthony Soto said watch-standers in the Coast Guard Sector Charleston command center were notified at approximately 3:30 a.m. that a crew member was bleeding and appeared to be suffering from internal injuries.
A Coast Guard flight surgeon was briefed on the situation and recommended the patient be taken off the vessel rather than wait until the ship docked in Savannah later in the day.
The helicopter crew was dispatched and airlifted the 52-year-old man from the 850-foot container ship. He was transported to Memorial University Medical Center, where he was initially listed in fair condition.
After being stabilized and undergoing a series of tests over the weekend, the mariner was released from the hospital the following Monday and flew home to South Korea shortly after.
Airlifting injured or ill mariners is all in a day’s work — part of just one of the 11 statutory missions the U.S. Coast Guard is tasked with carrying out, said Cmdr. Amy Beach, commander of Coast Guard Marine Safety Unit Savannah and Savannah’s first female Captain of the Port.
Speaking Thursday to the Propeller Club’s monthly meeting at the Pirates’ House, Beach outlined those missions and more for Savannah’s maritime community.
“Although many people associate the Coast Guard with its most visible mission — search and rescue along America’s coasts and waterways — the Coast Guard is actually a military, maritime and multi-mission service with a wide range of peacetime and wartime roles,” she said.
As one of the five armed services, the Coast Guard has a long history of defending our country at home and abroad in every major conflict going back to the two-year undeclared naval war with France in 1798, Beach said.
“Most recently, the Coast Guard has deployed cutters and forces, including members of the Coast Guard Reserve, to Iraq’s theater of operations — our largest overseas commitment of resources for defense operations since Vietnam,” she said.
Other missions include the security of ports, waterways and coastlines, drug interdiction — “On the average day the Coast Guard helps keep a half-ton of cocaine off the streets,” Beach
said — as well as ensuring marine safety and maintaining aids to navigation.
“We’re also responsible for protecting living marine resources, such as our right whales,” she said.
As the nation’s primary maritime law enforcement agency, the Coast Guard is also tasked with coordinating with other federal agencies and foreign countries to enforce immigration laws at sea, Beach said.
“Every year, thousands of people try to enter this country illegally using maritime routes,” she said. “Interdicting those migrants at sea means they can be quickly returned to their country of origin without the costly process required if they successfully enter the United States.
“But primarily, the Coast Guard maintains its humanitarian responsibility to prevent the loss of life at sea, since the majority of migrant vessels are dangerously overloaded, unseaworthy or otherwise unsafe.”
In 2014, the Coast Guard interdicted 3,587 total illegal migrants, including 1,103 from Haiti and 2,111 from Cuba.
The marine environmental protection program develops and enforces regulations to avert the introduction of invasive species into the maritime environment, stop unauthorized ocean dumping and prevent chemical and oil spills, Beach said.
In addition to its missions, the Coast Guard’s area of responsibility is vast, covering 95,000 miles of coastline, 361 U.S. ports, 3,700 marine terminals, 3.4 million square miles of water and 8,000 foreign vessels that make about 70,000 port calls in the U.S. every year, she said.
“And all of this is covered with an active duty force of 40,000,” she said.
“To put it in context, the Coast Guard is smaller than the New York Police Department — and we’re all over the world.”
Enough said.
Senior business reporter Mary Carr Mayle covers the ports for the Savannah Morning News and savannahnow. She can be reached at 912-652-0324 or at mary.mayle@savannahnow.com.
Following are the ships expected to call on Georgia Ports Authority’s Garden City and Ocean terminals this week. Schedules are supplied by GPA and are subject to change.
TERMINAL VESSEL ETA
GCT SAIGON EXPRESS Today
GCT ZIM LUANDA Today
GCT MSC MICHAELA Today
GCT MSC METHONI Today
GCT MSC LUDOVICA Today
GCT NYK DENEB Today
GCT SEALAND MICHIGAN Today
GCT STENA IMPRESSION Today
OT GRANDE MAROCCO Today
OT MORNING CAROL Today
GCT CMA CGM DON PASCUALE Saturday
GCT YM MATURITY Saturday
GCT ST LOUIS EXPRESS Saturday
OT SAFMARINE SUGUTA Saturday
GCT CMA CGM FLORIDA Sunday
GCT EVER LEGEND Sunday
GCT ISLANDIA Sunday
GCT DURANDE Sunday
GCT MAERSK KOTKA Sunday
GCT CLEMENTINE MAERSK Sunday
OT ENDURANCE Sunday
OT TIJUCA Sunday
OT BAHRI TABUK Sunday
GCT NYK ARCADIA Monday
GCT MAERSK COLUMBUS Monday
GCT MSC FLAMINIA Monday
GCT CORCOVADO Monday
GCT CMA CGM VIVALDI Monday
GCT CMA CGM L’ETOILE Monday
GCT YM ELIXIR Monday
GCT ZIM COLOMBO Monday
GCT OOCL VANCOUVER Monday
OT PACIFIC BLESS Monday
GCT MSC CAROLINA Tuesday
GCT APL EGYPT Tuesday
OT STAR KIRKENES Tuesday
OT ALWINE OLDENDORFF Tuesday
OT WEEKS 527 Tuesday
OT GRANDE GUINEA Tuesday
GCT TIANJIN Wednesday
GCT CONRAD S Wednesday
GCT GREEN SKY Wednesday
GCT MAERSK KOKURA Wednesday
OT STAR KINN Wednesday
OT FORTUNE WING Wednesday
GCT CMA CGM MOLIERE Thursday
GCT NYK DAEDALUS Thursday
GCT QINGDAO TOWER Thursday
GCT RHL AGILITAS Thursday
GCT MOL PARADISE Thursday
GCT OAKLAND EXPRESS Thursday
GCT NYK DELPHINUS Thursday