How nature’s fury stunned rescue workers
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: At around 4pm on November 30, at Vizhinjam Coast Guard base in Kerala, orders went out to all routine patrol boats of the Indian Coast Guard to return to shore, as a storm was coming. Then an SOS arrived from Thiruvananthapuram’s district administration — many fishermen were stuck at sea due to strong winds raging at over 130 kilometres an hour.
What began with the Coast Guard’s interceptor boats and offshore vessels — two of each — turned into a rescue operation of massive scale involving the Indian Coast Guard, Navy and Air Force. A senior Coast Guard officer at the Vizhinjam base, on condition of anonymity, said, “The Coast Guard is generally the first responder in case of any crises at sea, for search and rescue. But we realised very quickly that we were not equipped to handle this by ourselves.”
“Once we got the call from the state government, we activated all our ships in the Western Command and pressed them into search and rescue operations,” said Commander Sreedhar E Warrier at the Kochi Naval Base. “On the first day, six ships, two aircraft and two choppers of the navy headed out.” Apart from these, nine ships, two Dornier aircraft and one helicopter belonging to the Coast Guard were also deployed. One more ship went towards Lakshadweep Islands.
By the end of the same day, the Indian Air Force too had jumped in with an aircraft and two choppers for rescue operations. As Cyclone Ockhi picked up, fishermen closer to shore were quickly rescued. But finding survivors became tougher as night fell.
“The Dornier’s flying range is very less and has no special features for night searches, so we pressed the Boeing P8i aircraft of the Navy into action,” said Warrier.
The P8i — Poseidon 8 India — manufactured by Boeing has infrared cameras, magnetic anomaly detection and other surveillance cameras, which gives the navy night vision.
“We formed a joint action team of the Navy, Coast Guard and the Air Force and started rescue operations in full swing,” Rear Admiral Alok Bhatnagar, Flag Officer of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry Naval Area told HT. “Though it was difficult at night to conduct rescues, our Advanced Lightweight Helicopters (ALH) were deployed to winch up those fishermen who had fallen into the sea and needed immediate rescue,” he said.
“Coast Guard ships are the ones which are designed for search and rescue, more than the Navy. So we made use of our aircraft more to gather details and location of the stranded fishermen and passed it on to the Coast Guard,” he added.
INS Jamuna, INS Sagardhwani and INS Nireekshak were some of the Navy ships sent to conduct rescues along the Kerala coast. Even destroyers — vessels meant for attack — like the INS Kolkata, INS Chennai and INS Trikand were deployed.
On December 1, the Coast Guard’s Sea King helicopter flew out on its last flight of the night. It was about to turn back, when it sighted a small green object, 30 nautical miles from the Thiruvananthapuram coast. It was a lone survivor, hanging on for life to his boat. “It was a truly satisfying experience to have picked up this fisherman,” said the pilot of the Sea King.
That same night, an ALH diver, VK Verma, who jumped into the seas to rescue fishermen to safety, injured his hand on the winch wire but heroically continued to assist the fishermen. By December 2, deployment was increased. At the end of the day, the Coast Guard alone had rescued 87 survivors belonging to Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The Indian Navy picked up 65 more and nine others were rescued by the Air Force. Merchant vessels too chipped in, managing to rescue 28 survivors.
By December 3, the storm had moved on towards the Gujarat coast. As search and rescue enters the final stage, survivors are fewer.
As on 10am on December 3, 357 survivors were rescued from sea. But there is no estimate yet as to how many fishermen have in fact died in the fury of Cyclone Ockhi.