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More than 10 people are safe today thanks to the heroic rescue efforts of Alaska Army and Air National Guard units that responded to five emergency calls recently in remote areas.
One rescue involved an estimated 140 miles of round-trip flying.
Working in support of Alaska state troopers and local hospitals, the Guard units rescued several injured hikers, evacuating them from wilderness areas and providing medical treatment.
The Alaska Army Guard used an HH-60M Black Hawk helicopter to rescue five people who had fallen into a river while riding in an ATV. The Guard successfully retrieved all of them from the shoreline where they were stranded, including one injured person who required a stretcher to be lifted onto the helicopter.
The Alaska Air Guard’s 210th Rescue Squadron of Alaska’s Air Guard medevaced an injured hiker near Seward who had been rescued by the local fire department, airlifting him on an HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter May 24.
The Army Guard extracted an injured person from an area near Healy Lake that proved inaccessible to civilian air ambulances, deploying a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter to transport the person to the hospital.
Working with the Civil Air Patrol on May 26, the Air Guard also helped locate a hiker who had become lost, and from May 26 to 27 saved two people in remote cabins suffering from injuries in two additional separate emergencies.
Only a week prior, the Alaska Guard rescued four boaters who had been stranded using a UH-60L Black Hawk helicopter.
The 140-mile continuous flight June 3 saw a UH-60L Black Hawk helicopter flown by an Alaska Army Guard crew, accompanied by two fire department paramedics, evacuate a patient from Skagway to Juneau.
The Black Hawk had been previously modified to allow for extended flight hours without refueling stops.
“In these remote parts of Alaska, no single agency can do it all. Our ability to respond effectively relies on the partnerships we’ve built with first responders across the region,” said Chief Warrant Officer 3 Bryan Kruse, Bethel Army Aviation Operating Facility commander and pilot in command of the mission, in a release. “That coordination makes all the difference when time is critical.”
—By Zita Fletcher, with reporting by Staff Sgt. Seth LaCount & Dana Rosso
