At 10 p.m. on April 20, seven minutes after the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig exploded, the search-and-rescue alarm went off at the U.S. Coast Guard Air Training Center in Mobile, Ala. Pilot Lt. Andy Greenwood and his crew headed for their HC-144 Ocean Sentry, a CASA CN-235 twin turboprop, for the 115-mile flight. “We were at 4,000 feet when we hit the Gulf, and we could already see the fire,” Greenwood said. “As we got closer, the guys in the back had to take off their NVGs [night vision goggles].”
Eventually so did the crew of 6605, an HH-65C (Eurocopter Dolphin) helicopter based at CGAS New Orleans, 130 miles from the Horizon. They got the alarm at 10:10 p.m., were airborne 18 minutes later and arrived first on scene at 11 p.m. Lt. Cmdr. Tom Hickey and his crew were all veterans of Hurricane Katrina five years ago, but that did not prepare them for what they were about to see. Climbing through 500 feet, still 115 miles away, they could see the fire with their NVGs.
More In Rotorcraft
