Rescue after helicopter crew spot flare
08/09/2022
Two people in a boat that ran aground have been rescued near New Orleans, USA, after using a flare to signal to a helicopter rescue crew.
Coast Guard Sector New Orleans received a radio call from a third party for help early one morning in late August after the 24-foot skiff ran aground in wetlands near Morgan City.
The watchstanders used the radio tower location to identify a rough search area and a Coast Guard MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter was sent to search the Atchafalaya Bay shoreline.
It spotted the flare that led them to the boat, which had run aground in the wetlands, the Coast Guard said. The two occupants were hoisted onto the helicopter. They were transferred to University Medical Center in New Orleans.
The boaters were stranded without any other means of communication and were not the ones that made the initial call for help.
Lt. Cmdr. Lauren Keefe, a Sector New Orleans search and rescue mission coordinator, says, “With no other means of communication, the flare was the only way we could have known the boaters were out there.”
The image is taken from a U.S. Coast Guard courtesy video by Air Station New Orleans.
