Aviation Survival Technician Third Class Zee Lee

Rescue Swimmer, Coast Guard Air Station Atlantic City, N.J.

I first heard about the Bow Mariner when the search-and-rescue alarm went off and “tanker exploding” came over the loudspeaker. It took about 45 minutes for us to get to the site of the accident, about 50 miles east of Chincoteague, Va.

As we arrived on the scene, we saw only a quarter of the tanker sticking out of the water, maybe 70 to 80 feet of it. You could see the propeller. The smell of the ethanol fumes was pretty powerful. It was pitch black, but the ship’s power was on and the lights were shining.

At first, we hovered very slowly because we were thinking about the fumes. We didn’t want to ignite anything. We didn’t want the smell to overpower us. We came down lower and lower, hoping to see people holding onto the ship. We turned on our searchlights, but we didn’t see anybody. We circled the ship and looked around. There was nobody there.

The ship’s power went out. And that’s when we noticed a light shining through one of the small side portholes right above the surface of the water. The light was moving, like someone was holding it and walking or crawling. The ship started to sink. Another three or four minutes and it was gone.

As we searched for survivors, strobe lights were being turned on everywhere. They’re attached to life vests and rafts and are activated by salt water. We started with the closest vest. Empty. There were a couple of rafts floating on the water but they were empty, too.

We finally saw one individual who, from the air, looked like he was waving. At night, we’re not allowed to jump out and do a free fall. We get lowered down. It’s slower but you see more.

As they lowered me down, the smell of the ethanol got stronger and stronger. This person was covered with oil from head to toe. It was in his eyes, his mouth. I thought he was dead but then I saw his hand move. We have something called a quick strap that we can wrap around a body and we go up together. I put that on right away and gave the pickup signal.

We got him in the cabin, as far back as possible, and started doing our primary care. There was a small but weak breath coming from this gentleman. We tried to get the oil off, get his clothes off and increase his body temperature. We put on a defibrillator, but we weren’t getting anything out of it.

His breathing was very weak; his pulse was weak. We had to do mouth-to-mouth. A few times, he simply stopped breathing. We did CPR as we were moving inland. A few times, he started breathing on his own, and we thought he was going to make it.

We landed at the Ocean City, Md., airport, and the paramedics took him away. I later learned that he passed away that night. Hypothermia sets in so quickly. The water temperature had been maybe 40 degrees and he could have been in the water for an hour.

For me, the Coast Guard thing began in high school. I was a lifeguard on the Jersey shore, and I used to see the Dolphins fly over our beach all the time. I checked it out and thought, “that’s got to be cool; flying around, jumping out of helicopters and saving people. That’s got to be so much more rewarding than sitting behind a desk.”

Shortly after I entered the Coast Guard, I asked about rescue swimmer school. There’s a waiting list, and the training is brutal. The dropout rate is around 50 percent. There have been classes that wiped out and nobody graduated. Then there’s EMT [emergency medical technician] school and advanced swimmer school training, where we do cliff rescues and high sea rescues.

The program is very physically and mentally demanding, but the mentality of the swimmers I know is that we can do anything and save anybody.