Photo by: wsvn
Crews raced to aid a captain aboard a cargo vessel near PortMiami after he reportedly fell several feet down onto the deck.
According to Miami-Dade Fire Rescue, the call came in before 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday “as a hazardous situation involving a vessel in distress.”
The incident happened aboard a 250-foot ship called The Atlantic Power, just two miles off the port. It appears the captain was upstairs and was coming down one of the stairways when he slipped and fell between 12 and 15 feet.
“They are on board now. There was a fall at about 12 feet, 12 to 15 feet,” said 7News reporter Ralph Rayburn.
MDFR Fireboat 73 arrived on the scene, and several members boarded the ship.
Crews assessed the captain but ultimately determined it was too risky to put him on a backboard and transport him from one moving boat to another. The safest extraction was determined to be by air.
“Fireboat 73, can you do me a favor? Start air rescue for a possible hoist. We’ll advise when we arrive, which will be around six to seven minutes,” said a dispatcher over Broadcastify police scanner.
Air rescue conducted a hoist operation to safely remove the captain from the vessel and prevent further injuries.
“Hoisting off boats are particularly hard because they are moving targets,” said MDFR Firefighter Chris Kramer. “So, for this situation, the ship was moving and had us swaying about 200 feet in either direction, which made it difficult to keep over target.”
7Skyforced hovered above the rescue operation, as rescue personnel boarded the deck of the vessel.
“Pretty tricky rescue here,” said Rayburn. “They just determined that putting him on a backboard and try to lower him down to a boat, from one moving boat to another, was not the way to do it.”
Crews did a rescue tactic called “packaging the patient,” which is essentially a process used to safely secure a patient for transportation to a medical facility.
“We saw the ship was encountering high wind and high waves, which would have made it difficult for the fireboat to extricate the patient on normal means like a ladder,” said Kramer.
Elements such as strong wind gusts and rough seas made the rescue operation tricky.
“So they’ll secure him there. It’s about a three-minute flight from here to the hospital,” said Rayburn.
Ultimately, the captain was hoisted up to the helicopter using a tow line and transported to Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center.
The captain appeared to be alert when he arrived at JMH. The extent of his injuries is unclear, but he is expected to be OK.
Kramer credits ongoing training and partners like the U.S. Coast Guard with preparing them to handle tactical rescues like these.
“Our training throughout the year consists of inter-agency training,” he said. “Some is with our Miami-Dade fireboats, some is with our partners at the United States Coast Guard, but we do complete different types of hoist missions for these types of scenarios.”
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Source: wsvn
