A Coast Guard helicopter airlifting crew members from a disabled Malaysian freighter just off the coast of Unalaska Island crashed in a roiling pitch-black sea Wednesday night.
Of the 10 people aboard the Jayhawk helicopter, six were missing and believed in the water. Four were picked up at the crash scene, but their conditions were unknown.
The 738-foot Selendang Ayu, which had been drifting for almost two days without power, broke apart during the rescue attempt, the U.S. Coast Guard said. The master of the vessel and a Coast Guard rescue swimmer had remained aboard the vessel; it was not clear where they were late Wednesday.
The crash capped a two-day effort to save the freighter, which lost power earlier in the week during a transit from Seattle to China, the Coast Guard said. Two earlier helicopter airlifts had ferried most of the vessel’s crew from the ship to a Coast Guard cutter and to Dutch Harbor, which lies almost directly across the island.
Loaded with soybeans and carrying nearly 500,000 gallons of heavy bunker oil, the ship was adrift near Bogoslof Island, about 50 miles northwest of Unalaska, when the Coast Guard was notified early Tuesday morning and dispatched the cutter Alex Haley and three tugboats to the scene.
A tug took the vessel under tow Tuesday, but the tow line snapped about 7 a.m. Wednesday, according to the Coast Guard and the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, which monitored the situation Tuesday and Wednesday. Efforts to secure other lines to the disabled vessel failed, and the ship continued to drift southeast toward Unalaska at 1 to 2 knots.
The crew dropped one of its two anchors as the ship closed within a few miles of the island, but the chain on that anchor also snapped. Buffeted by gusting winds and 30-foot swells, the freighter came to within about 4,000 feet of Unalaska’s craggy west shore before its last functioning anchor caught hold with about 90 feet of water separating the vessel’s bottom and the ocean floor.
“The conditions are fairly dangerous,” U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Jim Olson said late Wednesday afternoon at an Anchorage press conference held hours before the helicopter crash.
“The currents through the channel are pretty extreme. ... We’re trying to stabilize the vessel right now.”
The Coast Guard reported late Wednesday afternoon that 18 of the ship’s 26 crew had been evacuated by helicopter off the pitching, rolling freighter to the Haley or to Dutch Harbor.
The others remained aboard to try to help save the ship, which was reported to have stopped drifting about a half-mile offshore, between Spray Cape and Skan Bay. Dutch Harbor city manager Chris Hladick said Skan Bay is rugged and rocky, with lots of wildlife and seabirds.
A big winter storm moving through the Gulf of Alaska created gale conditions throughout the Aleutians on Wednesday, pounding the freighter and its rescuers. Gusts up to 60 mph were forecast by the National Weather Service overnight, but conditions were expected to weaken some today.
The Alaska DEC, concerned about the prospect of the freighter going aground and spilling oil, already had planned to send personnel to the island today.
A spill from the vessel could threaten Steller sea lions, sea otters, harbor seals and seabirds foraging in bays along the island’s west coast, said Greg Siekaniec, manager of the Homer-based Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. Refuge biologists were traveling to Dutch Harbor Wednesday and planned to work with the Coast Guard to identify sensitive sites and figure out how to protect them if fuel starts leaking.
According to a federal hazardous materials fact sheet, the type of bunker oil on the ship is “a dense, viscous oil ... (that) usually spreads into thick, dark colored slicks” when it is spilled on water.
“It’s a lot of heavy oil,” said Gary Folley with the state DEC. “What makes this one, I think, different, is the fact that if it does hit the beach ... it’s an extremely difficult place to get to. It is chock full of sensitive areas and wildlife. There are no roads.”
