Anchorage Daily News

SEATTLE -- The last minutes aboard the doomed fishing vessel Alaska Ranger were spent in a desperate effort to launch the boat's life rafts into the Bering Sea, a survivor of the disaster told a federal inquiry board.

Twenty-two-year-old Ken Smith of Pasco, Wash., told investigators on Monday in Seattle that no one assigned to his life raft knew how to launch it.

All of the Alaska Ranger's life rafts were eventually launched, though not all crew members made it into a raft.

Five people died when the 203-foot catcher-processor sank March 23.

At an earlier hearing in Anchorage, crewmen and Coast Guard rescuers described battling freezing seas and terror as the ship went down on a pitch-black night 120 miles west of Dutch Harbor. Both the captain and the fish master died, as did crewman Byron Carillo, who plunged 40 feet into the raging sea after falling from a rescue basket pulling him to the safety of a helicopter, according to hearing testimony.

Rescuers reported wind-whipped seas rising 20 to 25 feet when they arrived at the scene, and snow squalls that reflected their lights and blinded them.

In all, 42 people were rescued.

The Alaska Ranger was on its way from Dutch Harbor to fish for mackerel in the Bering Sea when it began taking on water. Crew members were already in life rafts or in the water when helicopters arrived at the scene and began plucking them from the waves.

Testimony was taken at hearings in Unalaska and Anchorage. The hearing currently under way in Seattle is being conducted by the Coast Guard and National Transportation Safety Board. It is expected to conclude today, but officials say a decision on what caused the sinking will likely take months.

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