Trio recall violent crash
Crewmen who swam through icy ocean waters after their helicopter crashed are back together.
A medic who survived a helicopter crash near the Auckland Islands thought he was going to drown in the Southern Ocean.
For the first time, the trio recounted how they managed to get out of the helicopter and swim to shore and safety.
Pilot Andrew Hefford, medic John Lambeth and winchman Lester Stevens were heading to a medical call to retrieve a sick seaman on an ocean going trawler who needed to be extracted at the earliest opportunity on Monday morning.
Yesterday, Lambeth said his concern was just swimming.
‘‘Once above the surface, I started yelling to see who else was going to survive this. Immediately some relief [after Heff yelled out].
‘‘I thought I was going to drown. I went back to my training. I closed my eyes to orientate myself. The aircraft was half full of water. I could see the outline of Lester . . . instinct just kicked in.’’
Lambeth, who has a fractured rib from the crash, has been a paramedic for 22 years and said survival rates in helicopter crashes did not have a good percentage.
Once the helicopter was in the water, they had a slight bit of cabin light left for a short time, then it went completely dark, he said.
Lambeth grabbed a liferaft and they could see a silhouette of a cliff face. There was no real conversation about anything else other than just surviving, Lambeth said.
He recalled they spent more than an hour up and down in the sea, among kelp and rocks.
Once they made it to the rockface they were aware they could not stay there. There were huge cliff faces above them, and that’s when forces of nature turned on them a bit, Lambeth said.
They were aware a rainband was coming and the trio found a hollowed out log that they huddled together in.
‘‘It was the the wind that was going to be a cold chill on us. Emotionally, it was quite a turmoil.’’
The night was really long and there wasn’t much sleep to be had. They heard the Orion flying over so knew the process to rescue them had started.
Pilot Andrew Hefford, who has been a commercial pilot for 12 years, said he hoped when the helicopter went down they would not be too deep in the water.
‘‘I probably did panic a bit . . . a few mouthfuls of seawater and I thought, ‘This is it.’ ’’
Hefford recalls forgetting to undo his belt and was left coughing and spluttering, and starting to yell out for who was alive. He thinks the helicopter went nose down into the water, and once it sunk, that was it, they had to make their way to shore.
A worry for them was that they might get washed off the cliff face but their plan was to keep going around to get to the rocky coastline.
‘‘Once we got to that point, there was a sigh a relief.’’
Being all outdoor types of people they know how to make a bivvy.
‘‘John [Lambeth] being a good paramedic had his scissors on him to cut off ferns [for a bed].’’
Hearing that Orion provided the trio some comfort that a search was under way.
‘‘Flashed a flashlight into the sky. Couldn’t see the Orion but thought we’d give it a go.’’
Hefford said it was a good feeling when his boss, Sir Richard ‘‘Hannibal’’ Hayes, landed.
‘‘Hugs all round. Never thought I’d get a hug off my boss,’’ he joked.
The pilot injured his back in crash and has fractured part of his vertebrae. Hefford said he wanted to thank everyone for their support and thoughts.
‘‘It’s been awesome to know that people care.’’
While the three of them shared their stories and whether they managed to get any sleep while they waited to be rescued, Hefford and Stevens were quite sure there was snoring at one point coming from Lambeth.
They were two minutes away from landing at Enderby Island, in the Auckland Islands archipelago, when communications ceased with their base back in Fiordland. The last contact with them was about 7.37pm on Monday.
By 8pm Southern Lakes Helicopters had informed the Rescue Co-ordination Centre the helicopter is missing.
About 10am a fishing boat found a door from the missing helicopter.
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 of Southern Lakes Helicopters.
They were found on the north side of Enderby Island and they 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.
Earlier in the week, Hayes said they talked about what happened on the flight back.
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.
Earlier in the week, Stevens said the last thing he remembered before the helicopter went down into the Southern Ocean was seeing a hole in the clouds.
He had been knocked unconscious and came around in the sea and was bleeding from his nose. He swam to shore with Lambeth and Hefford. He described the swim as ‘‘not too bad’’ and the water being reasonably calm.
They built a shelter by using a fallen log and huddled under that in the middle of the island and waited to be rescued.
Stevens said they knew they would be rescued, so were not worried; they just were unsure when the rescue would happen.
There were lots of hugs and slaps on the back when the three
survivors were reunited with their boss on land.
The subantarctic islands – located 465 kilometres south of Bluff – are considered inhospitable and are known to experience harsh weather.
Earlier in the week, Hayes said he knew the odds of finding ‘‘my guys alive’’ were almost zero.
‘‘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,’’ he said.
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 as Stevens got up from the ground.
Hayes struggled 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. My crew and the guys we were picking up.
‘‘It was unbelievable to see people we thought we wouldn’t see standing up again.’’
He couldn’t recall what was said in the high excitement but remembered one of the rescued men saying ‘‘the sound of the helicopter was one of the best sounds we have heard for a long time’’.
‘‘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 to find sanctuary in a stunted rata forest.
They had no matches, no food and no locator beacons. Their personal locator beacons 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,’’ said Hayes, who believes it’s the survival story of the decade. I think we won Lotto.’’
The Transport Accident Investigation Commission has launched an investigation.