Anchorage Daily News

Coast Guard Petty Officer Alfred Musgrave strained to pull Byron Carrillo out of the rescue basket and into the helicopter hovering over the raging Bering Sea.

"All I could see was his eyes. He looked terrified and rightly so," Musgrave said Saturday to a panel looking into the Easter-morning sinking of the fishing vessel Alaska Ranger.

Then Carrillo was gone, falling some 40 feet through the pitch-black night back into the freezing sea. He was one of five Alaska Ranger crewmen who lost their lives that night.

Two Coast Guard helicopters and a fishing vessel managed to rescue 42 others despite nightmare conditions. The Coast Guard crews risked their own lives in high winds and roiling seas.

But as Saturday's Coast Guard hearing in Anchorage made clear, the rescue effort did have problems. There was a miscount in the number of rescued that led the Coast Guard to mistakenly believe all the Alaska Ranger crew had been accounted for. That led to a suspension of the helicopter search for hours, until officials realized that one crewmember remained missing.

The missing man, fish master Satashi Konno of Japan, still has not been found. There's also Carrillo's fall from the rescue basket, an accident that caused Coast Guard rescuers to choke up as they testified Saturday about what happened.

A Marine Board of Investigation is holding a series of hearings into the circumstances surrounding the sinking about 120 miles west of Dutch Harbor. Saturday's was the first and last to be held in Anchorage; The panel held hearings for the past week in Unalaska and is scheduled to reconvene in Seattle on April 15.

THE FALL

Conditions were outrageous the night of the accident. Coast Guard crews reported wind-whipped seas rising 20 to 25 feet when they arrived on the scene. They couldn't see anything without their lights on. But periodic snow squalls were blinding when reflected in the lights.

"Once the heavy snow squalls came in our lights were like using your high beams on a snowy road," Lt. Brian McLaughlin, commander of the first helicopter on scene, told the investigators Saturday.

The 203-foot Alaska Ranger, a catcher-processor, was on its way from Dutch Harbor to fish for mackerel in the Bering Sea when it first began taking water around 3 a.m. The cause hasn't been found.

An H-65 Dolphin helicopter was the second on the scene. It plucked survivors from the water without big problems at first. The crew then spotted two others, one waving his arms.

The second survivor, Carrillo, was in bad shape and showing the symptoms of hypothermia. He first wouldn't let go of nets he was clinging to, and then was unresponsive until rescue swimmer Abram Heller dragged him to the rescue basket.

"He was in a panic, I struggled with him for about 10 minutes," said Heller, who recounted the scene for the investigators.

Petty Officer Musgrave, watched from above. Musgrave said he lost sight of them about four times in the heavy seas.

"He'd be in the basket, I'd think we'd be ready for pickup and then a wave would wash over him and he'd be back out," Musgrave said.

Heller said he was still struggling to get Carrillo into a good position in the basket, and had not given any "ready for pickup signal," when the basket started to rise. But Carrillo looked to be in a fine position when the basket reached about 15 feet, Heller said, so he thought it was OK.

Musgrave said Carrillo, who was from Los Angeles, looked stable on the way up, and Heller had been washed out of sight on a swell. So he kept raising the basket.

But as he came closer to the helicopter, Carrillo slid and was hanging on by his arms. Musgrave said he brought him in as close as possible to the helicopter's cabin and tried to haul him in by his legs. He was too heavy, though, because the legs of his survival suit had filled with water.

Musgrave went to get a knife to cut open the suit and drain the water. But Carrillo slipped again, and was hanging on by just his elbows.

Musgrave ran back and grabbed hold of him.

"I held him like that two or three seconds and he slipped off and fell into the water," Musgrave said, his voice breaking.

The crew repeatedly checked on Carrillo in the water. But he was floating face down and never moved. His body was recovered from the water later.

The helicopter was running out of fuel and the pilot said they had to move on. The crew saved five men.

A MISCOUNT

The first helicopter on the scene, an HH-60 Jayhawk, was bigger and able to save more men. It spent eight hours on the rescue, battling the conditions and hoisting up crew members from the Bering Sea.

But questions at Saturday's hearing showed that the crew reported its first group of survivors numbered 13. The Coast Guard Cutter Munro, though, only got 12 off the helicopter.

The miscount led the Coast Guard to later think it had accounted for all the crew members, while Konno was still missing. The Jayhawk returned to St. Paul and the Dolphin turned back to the cutter as it appeared the search was over.

The Coast Guard realized what happened and resumed searching. It cost hours of potential search time, according to the testimony, although Konno would have already been in the water for many hours by that point and rescuers were spent.

Investigators asked McLaughlin, who was co-piloting the Jayhawk, about the miscount.

"We checked and double checked, where the discrepancy comes from I don't know, sir," he said. "We were pretty sure we had 13, sir."

Find Sean Cockerham online at adn.com/contact/scockerham or call him at 257-4344.

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