CANNON BEACH, Ore. – When Robert Carroll headed out into the surf off Indian Beach near Cannon Beach Friday afternoon, the 60-year-old surfer noticed that the incoming waves weren’t too big.

He’d surfed spots on the North Shore when he lived in Hawaii, and had more than 20 years of experience. Carroll had indeed visited that exact spot at the north end of Ecola State Park dozens of times in the past few years.

But Carroll, a Portland resident, wasn’t expecting the bigger waves he found when he got out farther. And he definitely didn’t anticipate getting sucked into a riptide that drew him into an area too hazardous to navigate, where it wasn’t safe to go in or out.

It would be a while before the cavalry – in the form of the U.S. Coast Guard – would arrive.

“I could see the people on the beach, and I knew they could see me,” said Carroll. “And I was concerned because it was beginning to get dark.”

He saw an opening between two jutting rocks, and his last ride on his board that day took him into the shore of a remote cove. But when he got there, there was no outlet. It was now dark, and he began to wonder if he’d be spending the night on the beach, cold and hungry. He began to mull over options. Should he wait until low tide and wade out?

When it was fully dark, the answer came.

An HH60 helicopter from Coast Guard Air Station Astoria was combing the area for him, along with a motor lifeboat from Coast Guard Station Cape Disappointment, and crews from Cannon Beach Fire and Rescue.

Lt. Mike Groncki was one of the two pilots onboard. After searching a while, the crew saw Carroll waving his surfboard at them in the spotlight.

“We’re pretty familiar with Indian Beach,” Groncki said. “It didn’t take too long to find him once we got on scene.”

The helicopter’s flight mechanic, Petty Officer Jonathan Savage, lowered a rescue basket to Carroll, and hauled him up. While he did not have to get out of the helicopter, a rescue swimmer, Petty Officer Eric Littwin, was ready to do so if things got ugly.

Carroll said he never lost his cool – and actually enjoyed being hoisted into the hovering aircraft.

“It was fascinating to watch the ocean get smaller as they pulled me into the helicopter,” he said, praising the crew’s professionalism and obvious skill.

“Every minute, I was aware of the danger of what they were doing and the professionalism it took to pull it off so smoothly,” Carroll said.

Intense trainingIt is the pursuit of that kind of professionalism and skill that brings helicopter rescue crews from across the country to Astoria twice a year for training at the Advanced Helicopter Rescue School. The school was established in 1995 and provides helicopter rescue crews with an added level of practical training that more accurately resembles the extreme real-life situations they’ll encounter when sent out on a rescue.

Senior Chief Clay Hill has been running the school for the last three years, in addition to his duties heading the Rescue Swimmer Standardization Team out of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Aviation Training Center (ATC) in Mobile, Ala. The school has an annual budget of about $500,000.

Every February and October, Hill leads eight one-week sessions with 16 students each – eight rescue swimmers and the four-person crews of two visiting rescue helicopters. Pilots and flight mechanics come from all 24 Coast Guard air stations around the country to polish the skills they use at home during rescues. Hill describes it as a “train-the-trainer” type of setting, and he finds it gratifying to know that the lessons he teaches will be passed on to other students in the future.

“This is the most rewarding tour I’ve ever had. I can’t think of anything better than to pass on the knowledge I’ve accumulated over the years to young people,” Hill said.

Danger off the coastHill became a rescue swimmer in 1987, and has spent his whole career in operational units ever since. After participating in numerous rescues himself, he understands why the basic level of training rescue swimmers get in ‘A School’ in Elizabeth City, N.C., is sufficient, but doesn’t usually expose them to the particularly dangerous conditions the Oregon Coast is famous for.

“What we try to do is give them the tools to minimize the risk,” Hill said while watching eight rescue swimmers battle the surf off of Clatsop Spit last week. Hill looked through binoculars as the trainees practiced ‘buddy tows’ in the hefty breakers. They wore about 15 pounds of gear to help keep them insulated from the chill of the roughly 45-degree water even though it added a bit of buoyancy in the big waves. An HH60 helicopter hovered above the swimmers, tracking their movements and looking out for debris or predators – like sharks – in the surf.

“The buoyancy can hurt you though, when you’re trying to get under a big wave that’s fixing to crash on you,” Hill said. Later the swimmers did free falls into the water outside the breaking surf, and practiced a maneuver called a “double lift recovery” that scoops a possibly hypothermic survivor up in a horizontal hold.

Repeat exposure to extreme situations will familiarize the students to traumatizing conditions and allow them to be more aware of everything that is happening around them. “That way they can adapt and overcome what they’re faced with, and develop a situational awareness,” Hill said.

Katrina helped with ideasHill orchestrates a training team made up of seasoned rescue swimmers, pilots and flight mechanics from the ATC in Mobile. The trainers teach classroom sessions each morning at the school, located in the old Tongue Point Exchange building, covering wave characteristics, rescue techniques, geographical awareness and survival at sea. In the afternoons, everyone gets out of the classroom to practice the skills they’ve learned, and Hill peruses the conditions between Fort Stevens and Cape Disappointment to find the most suitable – which really means extremely nasty – weather and surf conditions.

That might mean spending an afternoon lowering rescue swimmers on cables out the side of an HH65 or HH60 rescue helicopter hovering perilously close to the jutting cliff at North Head. Each aircrew consists of two pilots and two flight mechanics, and for two afternoons last week an Astoria-based crew rotated through, practicing dropping the swimmer, sometimes called an aviation survivalman or AST, onto the sheer rock face to rescue a 90-pound life-sized dummy.

The cliff rescue simulated a “vertical surface” rescue, which could apply to any up and down surface a swimmer might encounter. Scenarios from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina were often referred to in the classroom time, when swimmers broke windows to access people trapped in their New Orleans homes.

From the cliff’s face, Chief Kevin Bock, an HH65 helicopter flight mechanic instructor, watched swimmer after swimmer dangle from the helicopter, while he monitored their hand signals. The rescue swimmer uses arm symbols to communicate to the flight mechanic who controls the speed of the sensitive cable.

“Proper position is probably the most key element here,” Bock said. Dangers exist if a swimmer approaches a cold, panicked survivor the wrong way. The person might lunge away from the rock face too soon or they could fall off if the swimmer makes contact too high up. “It is important that the whole crew is participating in the decision-making process,” Bock said.

The pilot cannot see the rescue swimmer, and is focusing on a distant point on the horizon to maintain an absolutely still hover. The pilot relies solely on radio communication with the flight mechanic, peering over the edge, to determine the helicopter’s most advantageous position.

The flight mechanic sees allAstoria-based flight mechanic Petty Officer Trevor Tufts also watched from a secure perch on the cliff, and reflected about what’s going through his mind when operating the cable. An observer might think the pilot’s in charge, but in reality, the flight mechanic is the only person who can see everything that’s happening.

“Whenever we’re in a hover, I’ve got the full perspective. Everyone’s using their resources to manage the whole situation,” Tufts said. “If everyone isn’t working together, we can’t accomplish a common goal.”

That teamwork approach came in handy for rescue swimmer Petty Officer Travis Peck later that week as the students explored a cave located just south of Waikiki Beach at Cape Disappointment State Park. Swimmers practiced rescuing each other in just four feet of water. Peck said it was an unbelievable challenge just to stay upright with the massive waves pulling them every-which-way.

“It’s like being in a washing machine. It was so taxing just to try and get my partner. It sucks you so fast,” the Sitka, Alaska-based swimmer said.

But Peck’s enthusiasm to do something similar in a real-life rescue was evident, despite getting worked over by the water in the cave this time.

“It’s nice to go out there with your equipment and get pummeled. That way you know what it’s like, and you know you can do it.” he said.