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Nearly two dozen crew members were hoisted to safety in rescue helicopters late Monday night from a giant car-carrying ship that had listed onto its side in the North Pacific Ocean, according to the Alaska Air National Guard and the U.S. Coast Guard.
The 23 crew members of the Cougar Ace, wearing red survival suits, perched on a wall of the ship's superstructure in choppy seas as two Air Guard HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters and a Coast Guard helicopter lowered slings and pulled them to safety. The rescue operation began shortly after 9 p.m. and was completed by about 10 p.m.
"They did pack them in, as many as they humanly could, into all three helicopters," said Maj. Mike Haller of the Air National Guard. "They did it one at a time, and quickly."
The helicopters then headed for Adak, about 230 miles away.
The Singapore-registered Cougar Ace, carrying nearly 5,000 vehicles, had sent out an SOS Sunday at 11:09 p.m. The 654-foot vessel had begun to list and was taking on water, according to the Coast Guard. By midafternoon Monday, the Coast Guard reported that the ship was listing to 90 degrees, almost flat on its side in the sea.
As the rescue commenced, the seas were at 10 feet with 30-knot winds. Haller said chopper crews described those conditions as "very sporty."
"The fact you are 15 stories up in the air bobbing up and down is challenging for everybody on board," Haller had said earlier in the day.
Coincidentally, the Coast Guard, state environmental officials and other experts in shipping and safety are meeting this week in Anchorage to figure out how to better respond to -- and prevent -- disasters on the maritime super-highway between Asia and the West Coast.
Neither the Coast Guard nor the ship's owner, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines of Japan, could say Monday what had caused the Cougar Ace to turn on its side.
"We are still attempting to sort that out," said Greg Beuerman, a New Orleans-based spokesman for the company. "Our primary interest is in the health and safety of the crew." Crew members are from the Philippines, Singapore and perhaps other countries, he said.
The crew couldn't do anything more to try to stabilize or right the boat and needed to abandon it, said Coast Guard Petty Officer Eric J. Chandler. One crew member suffered a broken leg; that was the only significant injury reported.
Haller said the person with the broken leg was expected to be flown to an Anchorage hospital. The rest of the crew would be flown to Kodiak, the Coast Guard said.
The ship left Japan last week and had been scheduled to arrive Saturday in Vancouver, British Columbia, Beuerman said.
Rescue efforts were hampered Monday by choppy seas with swells of 8 to 10 feet, 35 mph winds and blowing rain that periodically cut visibility to just a few miles.
Rescuers dropped life boats from a C-130, but the crew couldn't get to them.
Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Todd Lightle co-piloted the C-130 that left Kodiak around 1:15 a.m. Monday. It was cloudy and dark when the plane got to the ship about 5:40 a.m., he said.
"All I could see was a big gray blob on the surface," Lightle said. "We couldn't even see it until we were almost on top of it."
The C-130 dropped three life rafts, he said, but "the vessel drifted right over the top of them." They tried to drop a fourth raft directly on board to give the crew something to hang on to if the ship went down. But it also dropped in the water, and the crew couldn't scramble down the steeply sloping vessel to get to it, he said.
It was "an awful situation," Lightle said.
Then, the Alaska Air National Guard sent two Pave Hawk helicopters from its base in Anchorage along with two HC-130 rescue tankers to refuel them midair. The Guard also sent another C-130 with extra rescue gear. The Coast Guard also sent a helicopter, which had to stop and refuel along the way.
A bulk carrier ship, the Ikan Juara, was standing by to assist the Cougar Ace crew, the Coast Guard said. Earlier, the Ikan Juara's crew tried to tie on to the car carrier, but that was too treacherous, Haller said.
The clinic and community center in Adak prepared hours before the rescue to receive the Cougar Ace's crew. Cots, blankets, food, oxygen tanks and a hypothermia unit were readied in case anyone went into the water.
Meanwhile, the ship appeared to stabilize on its side and might not sink, according to the Coast Guard and the ship's owner.
"There is an ongoing discussion of salvage versus abandonment," Beuerman said.
The ship is carrying 430 metric tons of fuel oil and 112 metric tons of diesel, according to the Coast Guard. Observers could see a sheen spreading two miles from the ship, but a small amount of fuel could have leaked out simply from the vessel being on its side, the Coast Guard said. It did not appear the fuel tanks had ruptured.
The ship is in international waters, but if it were to sink or break apart, pollution would probably drift into U.S. waters, so the Coast Guard will monitor the owner's actions to make sure "an environmental catastrophe doesn't occur," Chandler said.
In Anchorage, the events put an edge on a workshop being held Monday and again today to assess safety in Aleutian ports and waterways.
"It will be the issue again and again with these large vessels going through U.S. and even Alaska waters," said Rick Steiner, a University of Alaska professor in the marine advisory program who has called for a risk assessment in the Aleutians for years.
The workshop's focus is mainly on safety in the Aleutians, but any improvements would extend to the ship traffic farther south, where the Cougar Ace ran into trouble, said Leslie Pearson, spill response program manager for the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
Solutions include better tracking of vessels to help safety officials see problems early as well as placement of powerful tugboats in strategic spots to respond to disasters, Steiner said.
Issues may go beyond that to problems such as crew fatigue, said the Coast Guard's prevention chief in Alaska, Capt. Steve Hudson. And crews also may need more familiarization with Alaska waterways, he said.
The Cougar Ace's owner, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, is a large, Japan-based marine transportation company with car carriers, bulk carriers, tankers, ferries and cruise ships, according to the company Web site.
'Should we have Emergency Towing Vessels in the Navy stationed in Rosslare, Berehaven, Blacksod & the Swilly for something like this?'
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