The Sikorsky Humanitarian Service Award is presented annually to the person or crew that best demonstrates the value of rotorcraft to society by saving lives, protecting property and aiding those in distress, either through a specific mission or over a period of time. The 2010 recipient of the award is the crew of U.S. Coast Guard CGNR 6033, based at Coast Guard Air Station Clearwater, Fla.
On the evening of Sept. 7, 2008, in the midst of Hurricane Ike, the crew found itself in Providenciales in the Turks and Caicos, picking up a group of the British territory’s officials for a flight to the island of Grand Turk to survey the damage caused by the storm. The MH-60 Jayhawk had lifted off just after sunset when pilot Lt. Cmdr. Mark Turner and copilot Lt. j.g. Daniel Cathell received a message from a Coast Guard Falcon Jet operating near the Bahamas, which had responded to a distress call from a fishing boat. According to the vessel’s crew, the boat would not last the night. Turner immediately circled back to the airport, unloaded the passengers and headed to the boat’s location. Along the way, the helicopter battled wind gusts of up to 70 knots as it flew through rain squalls in the deepening night. “The Falcon jet had dropped a flare in the water close to the position of the boat, and it was the first thing that we saw with our night vision goggles when we were about five miles away,” Turner told AIN.
