Coast Guard Rescue: Jumping Into a Seething Ocean

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0:34Ready to see how easy and fun shopping for car insurance can be? Visit Progressive.com and give the Name Your Price tool a try. Take the stress out of shopping and find coverage that fits your life, on your terms. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. It's almost 2 o 'clock in the morning. on January the 24th, 1995. A wild winter storm lashes across the Atlantic, and 300 miles off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, the ocean is in chaos. The wind howls at 40 knots, the full force of the gales attacking like an invisible army. The waves tower into 20-foot walls.

1:19It is bitingly cold.

1:25Even for seasoned Coast Guard rescue swimmer Michael Odom, these conditions are vicious. The 30-year-old struggles to steady himself in the raging sea. His eyes stay fixed on his target a few meters away, another man being tossed about by the waves. It is a sailor who has abandoned his damaged boat. Now he's flailing in the seething ocean. Teeth gritted, Michael forges on. Every inch he progresses is a little victory. At last, he reaches the floundering man and guides them both to a rescue basket, hanging from a helicopter which thunders above them. Once the stricken sailor is safely inside the basket, Michael watches from the water as it rises towards the aircraft.

2:15The wind wreaks havoc with the ascent. The cable spins and swings violently like a pendulum as the rescued man clings on for dear life. Bit by bit, the sailor is slowly pulled into the safety of the cabin. Breathing heavily, body racked with cold, Michael waits below for the basket to return for him. But for minutes, nothing happens. Remember watching him take him inside the aircraft and then there's just this long pause. And I just kept thinking to myself, what? You know, what are they waiting on? I knew we were running out of fuel and needed to leave. And it was just like a period of just in my mind going, what the heck are these guys doing?

3:04Why are they not coming to pick me up? Unbeknownst to Michael, the wild swinging in the last ascent has badly damaged the helicopter's cable. Mario Vitone, Michael's best friend, is the backup swimmer on duty tonight. From inside the chopper, he sees the disaster unfold. The flight mechanic tries to see if he can save the hoist. He knows that he has to cut the cable off clean and add a second hook to it. He also knows that there's not very much hoist cable left. But when he went to get the hoist cable back out of the drum, it simply wouldn't move and the hoist freezes up. And that's it. And at the time, the U.S.

3:43Coast Guard had no other way. If the hoist went, that was it. Without a functioning hoist cable, the helicopter is unable to lift anyone else from the sea. But back in the water, Michael is still in the dark, in every sense. At last, he sees Mario appear at the doorway of the helicopter, clutching a six-man life raft. It's not a good sign. The raft falls through the air and splashes down beside Michael. He reaches for it, grabs the inflation cord and pulls. Just as the raft begins to take shape, the helicopter vanishes into the night. More than 300 miles from shore, Michael is alone in the blackness, in the storm-ravaged sea, exhausted, dehydrated and freezing cold.

4:37The rescuer is now the one in need of rescue. I know what it's like to look for a person in a life raft or a person in the water. You just don't find them. It's very difficult. I knew my odds of survival were very, very low at that point.

5:01Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? Welcome to Real Survival Stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. People suddenly forced to fight for their lives. In this episode, we meet Coast Guard rescue swimmer Michael Odom and his best friend Mario Vitone. In January 1995, Michael is part of a team dispatched to rescue the crew of the Mirage, a sailboat caught in the grip of a merciless winter storm. But when the helicopter's cable malfunctions and fuel runs dangerously low, the crew have no choice but to leave without Michael.

5:47out in the open Atlantic he must fight the overwhelming brutality of the ocean alone I still had enough mental acuity to recognize that hey I'm kind of entering that final stage of hypothermia this is not good and that's when I start thinking along the lines of I'm probably not going to make it and while Michael is swallowed by the raging sea his colleague Mario is racked with guilt for leaving his friend behind while facing a potentially fatal scenario of his own. We lost Mike. He's in a life raft. I don't even know that we're going to make it back. And so I'm thinking that my friend's going to die and I'm not going to see my daughter again.

6:27I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Real Survival Stories.

7:03It's 8 o 'clock in the evening on January the 23rd, 1995. The Mirage, a 40-foot racing sailboat, is caught in a fierce, frigid storm in the Atlantic. On their way from St. Augustine in Florida to the Virgin Islands of the Caribbean, the boat's crew have been surprised by a strong winter front. Three days in, and the tempest is only getting worse, as is the condition of their vessel. The engine has failed, the batteries can't be charged, and the food supply is running thin. The situation spirals into chaos when a huge wave crashes over the boat, almost capsizing it. Water sweeps through the craft.

7:49In his bunk, one crew member is thrown violently across the cabin. Another is battered overboard. Hooked on by his safety harness, he is dragged along behind the boat until he is hauled back in by the crew. In a final blow, their life raft is swept away, until it's just a fleeting shape rolling into the dark. It's time to call for help. Grabbing the radio, a crew member issues a mayday. Coast Guard units are alerted all along the southeastern US coast, from Virginia to Florida. It is swiftly concluded that the air station at Elizabeth City in North Carolina is best placed to respond. Situated between green fields on one side and the vast ocean on the other, the Elizabeth City Air Station is a sprawling mass of low-rise buildings and cavernous hangars, bustling with state-of-the-art aircraft and meticulously trained crewmen and women.

8:53As the alarm sounds, the station bursts into life. Coast Guard rescue worker Michael Odom is suddenly needed for this urgent mission. He is the duty swimmer tonight. But up until a couple of hours ago, he wasn't supposed to be. That night it was going to be a gentleman named Tom Holroyd. And Tom had some ankle issues earlier that day. And so he came in and kudos to him for saying, I'm not physically fit enough. I feel like that I might be a risk to others if I stay on duty tonight. So Tom, myself, Mario, a couple other gentlemen were on that shift. Between all of us, it came down to, you know, who's going to take the duty for Tom?

9:35And me and Mario both basically flipped a coin, heads or tails, and called it. The coin has spoken. Michael will be duty swimmer that evening. His friend and colleague, Mario Vitone, will be his backup. up. As the alarm reverberates through the complex, the pair grab their gear and hurry to a pre-mission briefing. It's going to be a complex rescue. Michael will need to rely on all his skills tonight, skills that trace way back to his youth in rural Texas.

10:11Me and my mom moved out to the country, and the reason for that was because my parents went through a separation. And so I just kind of learned to survive on my own before the days of cell phones. And, you know, when things happened, you just had to learn to deal with it and work your way through it. I just became a very independent young man. From a young age, Michael had a deep love for the water. He swam competitively at school and was often placed with older kids because of his natural talent. I was always like a water person. I loved to be in the pool. I'd spend all day there in the summertime.

10:50It's just always where I wanted to be, and I was a very good swimmer. He'd always planned to join the Army, following the men in his family who all served in the armed forces. But the chance viewing of a movie changed his life. It was always a passion of mine to serve the country, and I'd actually signed up for the Army. and at the last minute, one night, right before I got out of high school, I was watching a movie called The Poseidon Adventure about a ship that capsizes. And at the very end, they had a Coast Guard recruiting commercial and it just never dawned on me to go in the Coast Guard.

11:25So I called the number and away I went to the Coast Guard as soon as I got out of high school and I've been serving ever since. When Michael joined the Coast Guard, the job of rescue swimmer didn't exist. so he became a machinery technician. He worked in ships' engine rooms and served on teams that carried out inspections at sea. But in 1983, a tragedy changed everything. After the SS Marine Electric sank during a storm in the North Atlantic, 31 of the 34 crew members lost their lives due to hypothermia. In the aftermath, the Coast Guard created the Rescue swimmer program so that trained personnel could enter the water to save lives.

12:11In 1988, Michael signed up. You spent 16 weeks in North Carolina. They did a lot of rigorous physical training. They basically prepared you to go to the Navy school. And it's very intense, lots of physical fitness, lots of time in the pool, lots of simulations, and very much a boot camp style atmosphere. They're constantly screaming in your face. They do everything they can to create a situation of intense pressure and intense anxiety to see how you're going to react under those conditions, the best that they can simulate them in that environment. And I have to tell you, they were very good at it.

12:52By 1995, Michael was a qualified rescue swimmer and working at the air station in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, alongside Mario Vitone, who'd become his closest friend. Between all of the members of the shop, we were all very tight. But me and Mario were at a different level. If we were there at work and when we were off, we were always doing something together every day. We had a small business on the side where we were building stuff for kids like slides and swing sets and stuff like that. And we were extremely tight. At the night of the Mirage, I would say I would definitely characterize Mario as my absolute best friend in life that I'd ever had.

13:31For Mario, the feeling is very much mutual. If you don't like Mike, it's you. He's a sort of a litmus test person where you can, if someone has a problem or doesn't like Mike, then it's an indication of a flaw in the other person because it can't be Mike. He's just the best guy. He's just the friendliest, nicest, most just above board, one of those, you know, give you the shirt off his back kind of person. Michael and Mario make a great team. And now, on January the 23rd, on this bitter winter's night, their bond is about to be tested like never before, as they set off to rescue the desperate crew of the Mirage.

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15:39Just after 1am, a Jayhawk helicopter carrying Michael and Mario reaches the Mirage. The journey has taken around five hours, including a fuel stop in Wilmington. The helicopter only has enough gas for about 50 minutes out here. More than 300 miles from the coast, the clock is ticking on this operation from the start. A C-130 search and rescue plane is already on the scene. Unable to hover, it won't carry out the rescue, but it will provide support throughout the operation. From the helicopter cabin, Michael squints through the black and the spray. Searchlights prowl across the gargantuan waves, now and then revealing the fuzzy shape of the stricken boat struggling in the water.

16:27He double-checks his gear and prepares to be lowered into the turbulent ocean. They can't land the helicopter's basket on the sailboat because space on deck is too tight. The plan is for the ship's crew to jump into the water one at a time. From there, Michael can guide and lift them into the rescue basket. He's ready now. Sitting in the crew door of the hovering chopper, his flippers silhouetted against the dark. As he waits for the go, go, go, Michael looks down at the scene beneath him. We were thinking from what we briefed that we were probably coming up on a sailboat that was going to be partially submerged because they were claiming they were taken on water, that they had rolled over.

17:14It just didn't look as bad as I thought. Now, the weather, on the other hand, I was like, wow, this is pretty intense. Watching them slam up and down in the waves, I could certainly understand how they would be fearful to be in the situation they're in. We call them nor 'easters. Today, those storms get names like hurricanes because they're almost at the same level as a hurricane. It's a winter storm that's a front that comes up the eastern seaboard. Arctic air clashes with it, and it creates a very violent, severe storm. Michael is itching to get going, to get down into the water and initiate the rescue.

17:49But he still waits, perched at the doorway of the helicopter. What's the holdup? There's conversation going on in the cockpit that I can't hear because I'm off to ICS, the internal communication system, because I'm readying to go in the water. So I take my helmet off, I'm sitting there in the door, and I can tell there's conversation going on. I'm like, why are we not moving forward? Turns out there has been an unexpected call from the boat. The captain of the Mirage has refused to jump overboard, despite the rest of the crew being assembled on deck preparing to leap. Mario was giving me the cutthroat signal, you know, stand down.

18:29And some of that made sense to me because, like I said, I was looking at him and this doesn't look like it's that dire of a situation. And so I thought maybe things had stabilized and we were just backing off and that was it. It was going to be, you know, just another rescue that resulted in our assistance not being needed. But then something happens that changes the operation once again. One of the crew members, Mark Cole, leaps into the water. But at some point, Mr. Cole just decided, I'm out of here, and jumped overboard. Like a huge leap of faith on his part. And at that point, we have no choice.

19:08You know, these guys are jumping overboard. We got to get them out of the water.

19:20There's no time to lose. The chopper's fuel is being drained, and with bodies in the water, Michael must descend into the maelstrom. It's the role of Mark Buffetti, the team's flight mechanic, to operate the helicopter's hoist cable. Gradually, he lowers Michael into the water. Mario keeps a close eye on proceedings as his buddy approaches the surface. If all things were going equal, my job would be to sit there and take care of the victims as they came in the door. Mike wouldn't need my help on the rescue and the flight mechanic wouldn't need my help with the oisting. So I didn't have any responsibility except for to sort of stay out of the way and support.

20:00With Mario and Mark assisting from above, Michael lands in the seething Atlantic. The scale and danger of his task is immediately apparent. It's a huge swell. I think they called it at about 40, 40-foot swells. And they had some breakers going over the top of the waves there with the way the wind was blowing. So it's kind of like a washing machine type situation. The water is shockingly cold, made worse by the wind and the air temperature, which has fallen dramatically. Conditions are even more savage in the sea than they appeared from above. Scanning around in the frenzy, Michael is unable to spot his target.

20:44Mark Cole, the crew member who has jumped off the Mirage. The boat itself has now drifted away in the gales. Michael's team offers some help. One of the flight mechanics' job is to point in the direction of where the survivor is, knowing that, you know, we're going to lose sight of him once we're in the water. And so I'm looking back at Mark, and he's doing his job. He's pointing. I can see where the spotlight is. And I'm swimming, swimming, swimming, and it just seems like I'm not going anywhere. Michael swims with all his might, but he still can't see Mark Cole. Eventually, as the wind throws stinging salt water into his face, he's able to make some progress, moving towards the area where the helicopter's spotlight is guiding him.

21:28Eventually, I see Mr. Cole kind of in the same wave trough, and I actually remember a breaker kind of surfing me down to where he was in the trough. And that was very unexpected to me that it would be so violent.

21:49Finally reaching mark, Michael puts him in a rescue hold known as a cross-chest carry, essentially dragging the sailor from behind as he lies back. Michael starts to swim towards the helicopter's basket. But the ferocity of the wind means the basket constantly moves away from him, always just out of reach. The crew reels it in and tries to redeploy it, hoping it'll land closer. I'm swimming as hard as I can to get to the basket. And again, it just feels like I'm fighting a losing battle and I'm wondering why it's so far away. But they're picking it up, dropping it, trying to get it as close to me.

22:27They're kind of all around me, but not hitting the mark right in front of me. I just remember thinking, man, this is really taking a long time, knowing that we don't have that much time and that we have other gentlemen to rescue. And I think that first evolution did take about 20 minutes. So they dropped the basket. They finally get it. I get my free arm on it. I'm holding Mr. Cole with the other arm. I swing him into the basket. I do remember very clearly, it just seemed like he didn't understand getting in the basket. In his panic and desperation to escape the ocean, Mark struggles to understand his instructions.

23:03Unsteadily, he tries to stand in the basket, wobbling the attached cable and coming perilously close to tumbling back into the waves. And I kept trying to pull him down and tell him, sit you know sit down in the basket it's almost like he was trying to crawl up the cable a little bit or something he was hanging on to the top of the basket with his head right next to the hook and it was scaring me because i remember thinking hey if that cable goes too slack and somehow it's it's not a hard thing to happen to have that cable wrap around him it's going to kill this guy and i was yelling at him sit down sit down sit down and finally the basket cable goes tight and pulls him out of the water and he's gone.

23:56Completing this first rescue and hoist, or evolution in Coast Guard terms, has taken at least 20 minutes. Now, with only around 30 minutes of fuel remaining and the rest of the crew still to rescue, time is firmly against the team. Michael is hoisted back into the helicopter so they can reposition for his next jump closer to the Mirage. The sailboat has been pushed nearly a mile away by the wind. Once in position, the process starts again. The next man jumps from the vessel into the ocean. Instantly, Michael is lowered back into the water. He swims to the terrified crewman and wrestles him into the basket.

24:37The sailor struggles to squeeze his bulky six-foot-two frame inside. After some effort, he is in place. But just as the helicopter begins to reel this second man in, the ocean rears its head. I remember on the second evolution, we had the big wave that kind of took me up to the level of the aircraft. I remember almost looking directly into of Mark's eyes and thinking to myself, this is not good. This is like a rogue wave came across us. And I'd never seen an aircraft that close to the surface. Because of the height of the waves, the aircraft ascends to a higher altitude for the third evolution.

25:18But exhaustion is beginning to catch up with Michael. Mario observes his friend closely as he returns from the water. Back in the second time, we got the victim. And then he comes back in. And I saw him immediately grab the neck seal of his dry suit and pull it open. And you do that because you're trying to release heat. And I could tell that he was getting hot and fatigued. So I remember leaning over and, do you want me to go? And he said, one more, then you'll go. I was pretty exhausted after two. The hindsight of that is I probably should have said yes and backed off. But I was just like, let me do one more and then be ready.

25:53You know, you can have it after that. I just thought I had one more in me. and then out the door he went for the third guy. Michael's third entrance into the water is the toughest. As he is lowered from the helicopter, a towering wave rushes up to meet him. He slams into the sea, gasping for air and sucking in a mouthful of water. The salt burns his throat and lungs as he coughs and vomits, struggling to orient himself in the waves. He fights through the swirling sea towards his third survivor, Dave Denman. So far, they've been out here for 40 minutes. The helicopter has just 10 minutes of fuel left.