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Search and rescue

U.S. Coast Guard trains with local fire departments

U.S. Coast Guard Personnel and local firefighters practice a search and rescue scenario on Lake Superior Monday night.

MARQUETTE — Coordination, communication and practice — all are critical elements of a search and rescue mission on Lake Superior’s waters.

The U.S. Coast Guard conducted search and rescue training with the Chocolay Township and Marquette Township fire departments Monday night on Lake Superior.

The training, which started at 6 Monday evening in Marquette, gave local firefighters and the Coast Guard a chance to work together, ensuring the agencies can effectively coordinate while conducting a search and rescue mission.

“The goal today was to ensure a joint effort between the fire departments and the Coast Guard here in the Marquette area,” said Boatswain’s Mate 2nd Class Timothy Koscielny, operations petty officer and public affairs officer at the U.S. Coast Guard Station in Marquette.

He said Monday night’s training ensured “training is roughly the same, and that way, when we arrive on the scene to do search and rescue, that we know how to talk to each other.”

U.S. Coast Guard personnel on a Coast Guard vessel reach out to a man on a raft carried by Marquette Township Fire Department jet-ski while conducting search and rescue training Monday night. (Photos courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard, Marquette Station)

A group of five U.S. Coast Guard personnel and eight personnel from the two fire departments went through several exercises and scenarios Monday night.

“We ran through pulling someone out of the water on the back of their jet ski, as a conscious responsive person, someone able to help themselves, along with the fire department pulling them up,” he said. “Then we ran through an unconscious and unresponsive person (scenario), where they couldn’t help themselves and the fire department had to pull them up themselves, without any assistance from the victim.”

They conduct these types of trainings a few times a year, he said, noting Monday’s training with the two fire departments is the first they’ve held this year.

Working together on a variety of search and rescue training scenarios helps all parties be prepared to act quickly in a real-life situation.

“The benefit is that we all become on the same page, having worked together, he said, “And if we didn’t do any of these types of trainings, when we come into a real situation, there’s going to be a lot of confusion, the way we talk to each other, the way we work together — they wouldn’t know how to approach our boat, we wouldn’t know how to approach them and assist in the rescue.”

A personal watercraft from the Marquette Township Fire Department pulls alongside the Coast Guard vessel Monday night, with a man who posed as a victim in the scenario being lifted on to the Coast Guard boat.

He said enacting these scenarios for training and learning from the experiences allows them to be prepared to effectively handle real-life incidents.

Personnel from the Marquette U.S. Coast Guard Station regularly practice search and rescue missions in a variety of scenarios and conditions.

“We practice search and rescue just about every day,” Koscielny said.

They go through a variety of different practice scenarios for training purposes, such as towing disabled vessels, dewatering, practicing search patterns and pulling people out of the water, which gives them a diverse skill set to handle a wide variety of incidents on the water.

“We practice these in different scenarios, that way, when something happens, no matter what the situation is, we’ve done all these different types of things, he said, adding that regular training in a variety of scenarios and conditions gives them many tools to complete missions succesfully.

A U.S. Coast Guard vessel used for search and rescue training with the Chocolay and Marquette Township Fire Departments arrives at Marquette’s Lower Harbor at Mattson Park Monday night after training. (Journal photo by Cecilia Brown)

Regular training in a variety of conditions and scenarios is important, he said, as there are special challenges associated with search and rescue missions in Lake Superior, he said, with lake’s size and constantly changing wind and weather conditions.

“Lake Superior, there’s multiple challenges,” he said. “The wind, the weather kind of shifts fairly quickly on the lakes, the wind direction changes … it makes navigating the seas fairly difficult and coming up, making approaches on victims in the water, it can make that difficult.”

They try to train in rough weather conditions as often as possible, he said.

“We train for that in heavy weather if we can,” he said, noting “we’re out there just about every day we have those conditions to make sure that we can conduct those missions safely and we can get the people on board and back to shore.”

Koscielny advises boaters to wear life jackets, let someone know where they’re headed to and when they expect to be back, as well as bringing a whistle, cellphone or other item that can be used to alert responders to their presence and/or distress.

Cecilia Brown can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 248. Her email address is cbrown@miningjournal.net.

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