Oops. That wasn’t very clear. Kawasaki wasn’t able to contact anybody because of the cliffs that block reception there, but the planes have built-in electronic locator transmitters that are activated when there is enough force to suggest a crash. That must have been giving a faint signal to the Molokai tower, which the operator asked Lang about when he called for clearance to go to Maui. When Lang found the downed plane he contacted the Molokai tower operator again to tell him/her there was a plane down in the water.
Looking at the webpages for the Maui Co Fire Department, they have 3 fire stations on Molokai but it doesn’t look like they have helicopters. The county says they have one helicopter and 3 rescue boats. Probably the helicopter is on Maui. Maybe each of the 3 islands in the county (Maui, Molokai, and Lanai) has a rescue boat. The Coast Guard came helicopters, plane, boats, and crews came from Oahu. The fire crew was from Molokai.
ok, gotcha, and they all took their time...and arrived about an hour later?
The crew of a training exercise released smoke flares in the water...
So it was the news reports that were out of synch with what happened?