Emotional reunion
Shocking survival at sea makes boss the happiest man alive, says rescued crewman
The last thing that winchman Lester Stevens remembers before his helicopter crashed into the Southern Ocean was seeing a hole in the clouds. Then he came to in the freezing sea, with little memory of the crash.
Pilot Andrew Hefford, medic John Lambeth and Stevens were heading on a medical call to retrieve a sick seaman on an ocean-going trawler who needed to be extracted at the earliest opportunity on Monday.
Yet it was the trio who ended up needing to be saved.
They were about two minutes away from landing at Enderby Island, in the Auckland Islands archipelago,
when communications ceased. Stevens said he remembered the hole in the cloud and then he was knocked unconscious. He came around in the sea and was bleeding from his nose.
Stevens swam to shore with Lambeth and Hefford. He described the swim as ‘‘not too bad’’ and the water as reasonably calm.
He recalled being on his back for parts of it and just kicking. Once they were on land, instinct kicked in. ‘‘You know, we just did what we did and survived,’’ he said.
They built a shelter using a fallen log and huddled under that in the middle of the island, waiting to be rescued.
Stevens said they knew they would be rescued, so were not worried; they were just unsure when the rescue would happen. There were lots of hugs and back-slaps when the three survivors were reunited with their boss on land.
Stevens said that when Sir Richard Hayes, of Southern Lakes Helicopters, greeted them, he was probably the happiest man alive.
He said Hayes had been worried for hours but could not get out to them earlier because of the weather.
‘‘Knowing your mates need your help is quite traumatising. It’s quite different when it’s people that you know and you work with that need to be rescued,’’ Stevens said.
As for being back home in Fiordland, Stevens said the past 24 hours still seemed a bit of a blur. ‘‘I’m still trying to make sense of it.’’
The trio are all back home in Fiordland.
The subantarctic islands – located 465 kilometres south of Bluff – are considered inhospitable and are known to experience harsh weather.
Four helicopters were looking for the men on Tuesday morning. The trio were found about 11.45am by Hayes, an experienced pilot and search and rescue expert.
Hayes knew that the odds of finding ‘‘my guys alive’’ were almost zero, he said.
‘‘But I never lose hope that I’m going to get a result, because I have had results where I have thought the cards were stacked completely against who we were looking for and have had some good finds. I still had hope they had extracted themselves from the aircraft and just didn’t have time to get dry bags.’’
‘‘It was one of the best feelings I have had in my 40 years in the aviation industry.’’
They flew for about 30 minutes before one of the crew spotted orange shapes on a headland of the Auckland Islands called Ross Harbour. First there were two figures and then three.
Hayes struggles to describe the feeling.
‘‘Look, we went from a thought process of the worst result you can imagine to an 180-degree turn.
‘‘There they were. It was one of the best feelings I have had in my 40 years in the aviation industry. It was absolutely incredible to be able to see the three of them there. We landed and it was a pretty emotional time on the beach, I can tell you . . . It was unbelievable to see people we thought we wouldn’t see standing up again.’’
Hayes can’t remember what was said in the excitement but recalls one of the rescued men saying: ‘‘The sound of the helicopter was one of the best sounds we have heard for a long time.’’
The rescued trio were bruised, sore and still wearing their soaking wet immersion suits. Stephens had facial injuries, Lambeth had a broken wrist and ribs and Hefford had suspected back injuries.
They talked about what had happened. The helicopter had been a couple of nautical miles from Enderby Island when something had failed. They hit the water and managed to get out while the helicopter floated for about two minutes and then sank in 12 metres of clear water. Hayes would later see the white shape under the water.
He says the crew could see the shore even though it was dark and the sea was calm.
‘‘They could see the cliffs just to the west. They kicked their way to shore.’’
The tide was out and big flat tables of rock were exposed. The men fought their way through the kelp and then walked around the coast for several hundred metres to find sanctuary in a stunted rata forest.
They had no matches, no food and no locator beacons. Their personal locator beacons kept in their immersion suits were lost in the crash. Finding a sheltered depression, they used ferns to try to keep the heavy rain off.
They tried to attract attention by flicking torches on and off but with no luck.
‘‘It was shocking,’’ says Hayes, who believes it’s the survival story of the decade. ‘‘I think we won Lotto yesterday.’’
The Transport Accident Investigation Commission has launched an investigation.