Only in Alaska

Late Christmas Eve 2022, the Alaska Rescue Coordination Center (AKRCC)—an entity comprising primarily Air National Guard personnel tasked with providing 24-hour rescue coordination in support of U.S. military and civil aviation search and rescue—received a call from the Alaska Native Medical Center (ANMC)—a non-profit, Anchorage-based health center providing medical services to Alaska natives—requesting emergency assistance for a patient experiencing acute complications of pregnancy at a clinic in Shaktoolik, a coastal settlement approximately 365-nautical-miles northwest of Anchorage.

Prevailing weather conditions along west-central Alaska’s Norton Sound precluded the patient being airlifted by civilian air ambulance.

AKRCC Major Paul Rouenhorse stated: “Crosswinds at the unattended, gravel airstrip in Shaktoolik and surrounding airfields were gusting in excess of 35 knots. While this exceeds weather limitations for civil air ambulance, the HH-60 is capable of hovering into and safely landing in extremely high winds.”

Sikorsky’s HH-60G Pave Hawk is a twin-engine, four-blade, medium-lift utility helicopter deriving of the famed UH-60 Black Hawk. The HH-60G’s core function is recovery of personnel under hostile conditions. The machine is particularly well suited to search and rescue, emergency aeromedical evacuation (MEDEVAC), disaster relief, humanitarian aid, and counter-drug missions.

The AKRCC coordinated with the USAF’s 176th Wing to dispatch a 211th  Rescue Squadron (RQS) HC-130J Combat King II, an evolution of Lockheed’s C-130 and the only dedicated fixed-wing personnel recovery platform in the USAF’s inventory, and a 210th RQS HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopter manned by a 212th RQS Guardian Angel team. USAF Guardian Angel teams comprise combat rescue officers; survival, evasion, resistance, and escape specialists known as pararescuemen; and uniquely trained support personnel dedicated to the recovery of downed, lost, or otherwise imperiled USAF personnel. Two pararescuemen were assigned to both the HH-60G and the HC-130J

Master Sergeant Christopher Bowerfind, the mission’s lead pararescueman, set forth: “ANMC reported that the patient was losing blood, so we immediately contacted our mission support team to coordinate a blood pickup from the 673d Medical Group.”

En route to Shaktoolik, the HC-130J refueled the HH-60 in-flight and provided weather reconnaissance until the helicopter landed.

The pararescue team and medical personnel administered intravenous fluids to the woman in the ANMC clinic and conducted the critical blood transfusion.

Master Sergeant Bowerfind added: “This is the first time that the 212th RQS has administered a blood transfusion in support of Alaska civil search and rescue missions.”

Upon determining their patient’s bleeding had subsided and she was in stable condition, the Guardian Angel team prepared the woman for transport while continuing to administer blood and monitor her vital signs.

The HC-130J, meanwhile, proceeded some 32-nautical-miles south to Unalakleet for purpose of assessing the municipality’s airfield for a possible transload of the patient from the helicopter to the far speedier and higher-flying C-130J. The crew determined the crosswinds were too strong at Unalakleet, however, and deemed a transload operation could be more safely conducted in McGrath, an Alaskan village approximately 150-nautical-miles southeast of Unalakleet and a full 173-nautical-miles distance from Shaktoolik.

Major Rouenhorse stated: “While the [Guardian Angel] team transported the patient into the Pave Hawk, the aircrew verified the winds and reported a seventy-knot headwind back to JBER [Anchorage’s Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson]. This affirmed our decision to conduct a patient transload at an airfield west of the mountain range.”

In McGrath, the Guardian Angel team transferred the patient to the HC-130J and escorted her to JBER, where she was released to an Anchorage Fire Department ambulance and conveyed to ANMC on Christmas morning.

Sergeant Bowerfind concluded: “This mission was truly one of those ‘only in Alaska’ moments. The patient was surrounded by family as the entire village showed up to offer help; from vehicle transport to and from the helicopter to safe movement across the ice. It truly takes a village.”

FMI: www.af.mil