With 24 days to go till I retire from the Coast Guard, todays 20 Years a Coastie photos are continuing my Cutter Deployments while stationed in Miami between 2005-2009. Specifically, they are all about Training and Emergency Preparedness. When at sea, the only people who you have to rely on in an emergency are you and your shipmates. I hit on this about 2 months ago (at 87 days to go), so I wont repeat it all, but it goes without saying, proper preparation and training are critical when the GQ (General Quarters) alarm rings. It could be a fire, a Helo crash on deck, flooding, or any number of things, when the alarm goes off, everyone must know their job and how to respond. The same goes for Training for higher risk operations, like landing and recovering a Helo on deck at night, HIFER (Helicopter In Flight Refueling) and other Hoisting evolutions, and Hot Gassing (where a Helo is re-fueled while still running). Cool side note, the 2006 deployment on the CGC Mohawk was the first H-65 Charlie Deployment from Miami, hence the Yeah, its got a Hemi sticker as a nod to our new engines. These photos cover many of those operations. While onboard the CGC Seneca (Firefighting Training) and the CGC Mohawk (Helo Ops), both in 2006, whenever we were conducting these drills and training, I would find an out of the way spot with my camera and snap some shots. You will notice during Helo Ops some of the Crew are wearing different colored shirts. Yellow is the LSO (Landing Signal Officer, or the person in charge of the Flight Deck), Blue is the Tie-Down crew, Purple is Refueling, and Red is for the Firefighting Team, and are the guys dressed out in the Silver Hot Suits. They would usually conduct a Crash on Deck drill where they had to carry us out of the Helo. You could always tell just how they felt about having us onboard by the way the Hot Suit guys would set us down. During the Firefighting Drills, no worries, the smoke isnt real. Just a fog machine to add realism to the training. The coolest thing I remember from that, particularly when compared to my Non-Rate days on a Firefighting team, was that they had an infra-red camera that could look through the smoke and find people in need of rescuing. And when I hooked the Ships Crew up with copies of these shots (and many more), it went a long way toward proving that Aviators arent completely useless onboard a Cutter. Although no amount of pictures, however awesome, could make up for the photo of two Airdales sitting on a Flammable Diesel storage locker while a Fire Fighting Drill is being conducted in the hanger where our Helo is parked. Simply embarrassing.
Posted on: Fri, 10 Oct 2014 03:01:28 +0000
Trending Topics
© 2015