They are a familiar but mysterious feature of the sky above The City.
They rise from a Bay-front nook nestled north of San Francisco International Airport, dwarfed by jumbo jets, zipping low across The City, Peninsula or Bay, answering distress calls from out at sea and inland.
Missions flown by San Francisco-based Coast Guard helicopters vary prodigiously, and span north to Point Arena, south to Point Sur, west into the Pacific Ocean and east into Nevada.
Heavy-duty .50-caliber machine guns are mounted whenever cruise ships arrive or depart so they can be safely ushered through the Golden Gate.
High-tech equipment aids searches for marijuana fields, illegal fishing boats and drug smugglers.
Ropes and a rescue basket are carried to pluck stranded surfers, wayward boaters or injured hikers out to safety.
When trouble demands the attention of the air station, which was founded during World War II and is now one of 26 nationwide, its officials are alerted by an oscillating siren. Quiet at first, then building to a racket, the siren rouses at least 14 on-duty officials working 24-hour shifts at the station.
Two pilots, a flight mechanic and a rescue swimmer pull on special suits that will protect them from frigid water. The crew gathers facts about their impending mission, checks the nuances of local weather conditions and hurriedly plans the operation in a computer- and plasma-TV-equipped room.
Within 30 minutes of the first sound of the siren, the copter rises gently, laden with fuel, equipment and the four-person crew, and slices horizontally through the sky.
Under a multibillion-dollar spending spree started after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Coast Guard last year bought four replacement helicopters for Air Station San Francisco, which allows them to carry machine guns for law enforcement and perform counterterrorism missions.
This month, the agency supplied the first of three promised heat-detecting camera systems to the Air Station.
The equipment will help locate victims in chilly water — normally a tricky target to find, particularly if a boat or plane has sunk — because of the great temperature difference between the water and the body, according to Air Station Cmdr. Samuel Creech.
“The cold water temperatures create a very good, high-definition contrast,” he said. “A human body temperature will be in the 90s and water temperatures around here are, at their best, in the 50s.”
After five minutes in the Bay or in the Pacific Ocean off San Francisco, a victim’s hands can stop working as their body redirects waning heat from its extremities to protect its vital organs, according to Creech.
The brain begins to slow, mental abilities are lost and eventually the body shuts down.
Every minute counts in a cold-water rescue, and locating a waterborne victim quickly can mean the difference between life and death.
In addition to protecting the coast and the ocean, the Coast Guard is frequently called upon to help neighboring agencies that lack the airpower and equipment it can provide.
On April 12, a Coast Guard helicopter arrived above the site of a badly injured hiker at Salmon Creek Canyon, about 25 miles south of Big Sur, well after dusk.
The helicopter crew had been dispatched after the San Luis Obispo County Fire Department helped lead a rescue team that hiked and waded for several hours to reach the man, who was in shock and pain after his hand was mangled by a falling rock.
The flight mechanic onboard the helicopter wore night-vision goggles as he deftly lowered a rescue basket to the injured man, who clambered aboard and was winched to safety.
But without the laborious efforts of the on-ground crew, the piloting team would have struggled to find the injured man, according to Creech.
That’s because the night-vision goggles only amplify existing light. They do not allow helicopter crews to peer through foliage to search for the distinctive heat profiles radiated by humans.
But, with the new equipment in tow, rescue teams will now be able to perform more effective searches for missing hikers and inadvertent swimmers, even in the dark, according to Creech.
Coast Guard air stations in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Houston recently became the first in the nation to receive the heat-detecting devices, which are called electrical optical infrared systems.
Air Station San Francisco is still training its crews on how to use the devices, but they are ready to be used in an operation, Creech said.
By the end of summer, he said, the four-helicopter station is scheduled to have three working systems available to aid in its life-saving search-and-rescue missions.
Guarding the Bay Area
Air Station San Francisco
1 Hangar
4 Helicopters
120 Personnel
14 Minimum number of on-duty staff
$5,800 Cost of one hour of helicopter operation
$6 million Annual salary expenses
$26.1 million Annual expenses, including salaries
68 Years since Air Station San Francisco was founded
83 Years since the Coast Guard’s first air station was founded
28 Air stations nationwide
$5,800 Cost of one hour of helicopter operation
$6 million Annual salary expenses
$26.1 million Annual expenses, including salaries
Source: U.S. Coast Guard
For crew, saving lives ‘most rewarding’
If you’re rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter crew, you might be surprised by the friendly faces that save you from a different fate.
The agency’s stations are bastions of surfers, lifeguards, boaters and other water-lovers who joined the military, not necessarily because they wanted to go to war, but because they wanted to lead ocean-faring lives that allow them to save the lives of others.
Under President George W. Bush, the search-and-rescue-focused agency became increasingly militarized. The four Coast Guard helicopters that buzz over San Francisco, for example, recently replaced older models because they are equipped to allow crews to carry machine guns.
Unlike the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines, which fall within the Department of Defense and are therefore barred by the Posse Comitatus Act from enforcing civilian laws, the Coast Guard is an agency within the Department of Homeland Security and can legally use its weapons to interrupt illegal fishing, smuggling and narcotics operations.
But within the diverse ranks of Air Station San Francisco, the pilots and their colleagues are more likely to talk about the life-saving components of their jobs than law-enforcement or potential war-faring missions.
“When we have a good search-and-rescue case — whether it’s inland or out over the water — and we get somebody to safety,” Lieutenant Commander Andrea Sacchetti said, “that is the most rewarding part of our jobs.”
The 35-year-old pilot, a New England native, has spent the last 17 years of her life in the Coast Guard — the first four years of which were spent at the agency’s Connecticut-based training academy, where she secured a science degree and launched her career.
“My dad was out of work and the academy was free, so I got in and went to the academy. But I always wanted to be a pilot — I had gravitated towards the military because I always wanted to fly, and it’s a good way to get your license,” Sacchetti said.
A life of constant redeployments is the toughest part of the job, said the pilot, who has one year remaining on her four-year stint in San Francisco.
But, in a phenomenon that’s common within the agency, the challenges are made more tolerable by Sacchetti’s husband’s job — he is also a Coast Guard official, currently stationed with Sector Command at Yerba Buena Island. “For dual Coast Guard couples, they do try to co-locate you,” she said.
— John Upton
Missions accomplished
Missions performed this year by Air Station San Francisco:
May 17: A stranded boater was airlifted after he ran out of gas and his 24-foot boat ran aground on a jetty in the Richmond Inner Harbor.
May 17: A woman was airlifted from a cruise ship, 30 miles west of Bodega Bay, after she was saved from drowning in an onboard swimming pool and resuscitated by cruise-ship workers.
April 12: An injured hiker was winched to safety from Salmon Creek Canyon, south of Big Sur.
March 31: A stranded canoeist was airlifted near Oakland Airport by a helicopter-based rescue swimmer, who also helped coordinate the boat-based rescue of 11 other canoeists whose boats were flooded by heavy swells.
March 28: A four-person family was airlifted and transported to a hospital after their light plane crashed in difficult terrain at Steinberger Slough near the San Carlos Airport.
Feb. 26: Two stranded but uninjured hikers were transferred from a cliff in the Marin Headlands to nearby Tennessee Beach.
Feb. 21: Two hypothermic boaters were plucked from a life raft after their fishing boat capsized and sank near Point Año Nuevo; after three days, the Coast Guard abandoned the search for a third victim, Benson Nguyen.
Feb. 17: A man was airlifted after his 36-foot cabin cruiser ran aground and started flooding in the Oakland Estuary.
Feb. 7: An injured woman was airlifted from a beach and taken to San Francisco General Hospital after she fell off a horse and tumbled down a cliff at Fort Funston.
Jan. 28: A helicopter crew scoured the Bay for signs of oil pollution after a 741-foot oil tanker, the Overseas Cleliamar, lost power.
Jan. 25: Three boaters were hoisted to safety after their 18-foot power boat ran aground in the Montezuma Slough, north of Pittsburg.
Jan. 15: The boundaries of a 500-yard oil sheen in Monterey Harbor were determined by a helicopter crew.
Jan. 15: Two men and their dog were airlifted out of their stranded boat, which had run aground on an island near Rio Vista.
Source: U.S. Coast Guard
