Posted on 01/10/2014 1:52:43 PM PST by The Sons of Liberty
A month after a small plane crash in Hawaii, a surviving passenger shows GoPro footage and even a selfie taken during the ordeal.
Would you have done the same? Ferdinand Puentes was one of nine passengers in a 2002 Cessna Grand Caravan which suddenly suffered engine failure off Kalaupapa, Molokai in Hawaii last month. As he heard the engine fail and saw the plane heading for the water, one of his first instincts was to turn on his GoPro camera and film what might have been his own demise. As KHON-TV reports, Puentes knew the danger he was in, yet the decision to film as much as possible might perplex a few. He managed to get out of the plane alive and survived the crash. However, while he was floating on a seat cushion and wearing his life raft, he took a selfie.
Was the impulse to record just a natural reaction? After all, any bystander or news organization would have likely done the same thing. And these days everyone is using their phones to film just about everything they see. But wouldn't one's first instinct be to try to contact family and friends to say goodbye? Perhaps that did happen. The footage reflects a quite stunning lack of panic. The passengers behave in an orderly manner. There is no screaming or pushing. No one seems frantic at all. Loretta Fuddy, Hawaii's 65-year-old state director of health, died in the crash, despite managing to leave the plane. In watching Puentes talk to KHON-TV, though, it's evident that the footage brings back painful memories. Would everyone want to have such ready access to a reminder? Or would some prefer to forget? "You could have died," Puentes told KHON-TV. "There's so much variations that could have happened for the worse."
I'll try to put myself in their shoes, and I would say bugger the instructions, there's a woman here with her eyes wide open, her jaw slack and her head tilted over, with only the lifevest keeping her face out of the water. She's pale as a ghost and not moving. Her hands are floating like she's a corpse. So what am I going to do? Try to get her out of the water first so someone can try to revive an obviously dead person? Or do I attend to the nearest living person who is tired and treading water, weighed down because he/she is fully dressed? I think I know the answer to that one. There are times when it's better for the living to ignore the manual and get on with it.
'Protocols' are surely guidelines; rigidly enforced, you end up removing the human element, and I can't see that being a good idea.
One more question. Is it known for certain how long Fuddy was dead before the Coast Guard arrived? If so, how was that determination made? [If you don’t know the answer don’t bother looking it up. I’m curious, but only mildly so. Don’t waste a lot of time on it; if you know, good; if not, just let it go. Thanks either way.]
When watching the video, and looking out the window, the sea is calm, almost glass like in appearance, accounting for the smooth landing as it were. Large swells would have likely caused grave damage to both aircraft and occupants, due to the blunt forces. Skimming versus colliding. Two very different variants.
No, the gal with the bare arms isn’t his companion. His companion was a 74-year-old woman who PJ Ornot rescued right away; she didn’t move to get his attention until he was very close to her. I believe her photo is the last image at http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/slideshow?widgetid=100895 . She’s wrapped up in blankets and appears to be sleeping. She is a dark-skinned Asian woman who seems small of frame. It would make sense for her to get cold before any of the others, without the insulating effect of fat. She was in stable condition, like Puentes, when Honolulu EMS picked her up from the Makani Kai headquarters at the Honolulu airport.
That’s why I say the woman with the bare arms is a 10th person on the plane. She’s not one of the 6 males (Puentes, Kawasaki, Yamamoto, Jacob Key, Phillip Holstein, or the 70-year-old who smiled at Mark Peer AFTER a man with a clear cut and bump on his head - probably Kawasaki since he’s the only one with a visible cut that I’ve seen) was picked up by PJ Ornot). And she’s not one of the 3 females (Fuddy, Rosa Key, and the 74-year-old woman who was taken to Honolulu).
She’s somebody they don’t seem to want us to know about, and was apparently the one the Coast Guard flew directly to Queens Hospital, by the process of elimination, since we know the outcomes for the others:
Kawasaki - Makani Kai flew him to Honolulu
Yamamoto - Makani Kai flew him to Honolulu
Puentes - Coast Guard flew him to Honolulu
74-year-old female tourist - Coast Guard flew her to Honolulu
70-ish male tourist - was fine when Mark Peer picked him up
Rosa and Jacob Key - stayed in Molokai overnight and flew to Oahu the next day
Hollstein - swam to shore and wasn’t rescued
Fuddy - died and was taken to Molokai Memorial Medical center for an autopsy
So who would be the person that the Coast Guard flew directly to Queens Hospital? And why did the NTSB say that there were only 3 injured victims, including Kawasaki, if this mystery woman was injured so badly that she was flown directly to Queens rather than flown to Makani Kai headquarters like the other 2 victims the Coast Guard transported?
I meant to imply the sea was relatively calm as seas go, so the buffeting or spray or being inundated by waves was a nonfactor. Hey! What do you expect me say... I was there. /s
Agree w you. My sister is an Air Traffic Control Supervisor. She is not so sanguine about sea landing/crashes as some. Particularly w planes that have no retractable landing gear. Waves can wreak havoc w fixed/extended landing gear. Bottom line, I wd not agree to be a passenger on a Cessna that was scheduled to crash-land in the sea. Wdn’t care for my odds at all.
And what with insurance assessors, autopsy, rescue reports, engine manufacturer inspection, potential civil law suits, not to mention the civil aviation authority (whatever you call it) that would have to be the messiest, most open to discovery method I've ever heard of...with a whole bunch of survivors to testify, one of whom made a video!
There's something not right, I'll agree, but I smell some kind of negligence/insurance problem as a result of the event, long before homicide. The Director of Public Health in Hawaii just turns out to have been the most unhealthy person on that trip.
And like everyhting else to do with anything that involves zero, no matter how peripheral, I could be wrong.
Did the rescue swimmer follow triage protocols?
Under the S.T.A.R.T. Triage model which the USCG links on their website (Canadian CG model), Fuddy would be evaluated for breathing and pulse, if none, he would move on to the next victim. The question would be were the USCG working under local Hawaiian triage protocols? At least one hospital on Oahu uses the S.T.A.R.T. model.
Image Source: Ferdinand Puentes
Not named. She looks quite young.COULD EVEN BE A YOUNG MAN.
So who would be the person that the Coast Guard flew directly to Queens Hospital? And why did the NTSB say that there were only 3 injured victims, including Kawasaki, if this mystery woman was injured so badly that she was flown directly to Queens rather than flown to Makani Kai headquarters like the other 2 victims the Coast Guard transported?
And how would Ferdinand Puentes have been able to photograph her in the hospital? Does she even belong in that squence of images?
I think the image of that person on the bed all wrapped up is of a young person who is DECEASED.
There is a triage protocol called S.T.A.R.T. (Simple Triage and Rapid Treatment).
Here are the categories:
Immediate (RED)– Life Threatening Injury
Delayed (YELLOW)– Serious Non Life Threatening
Minor (GREEN)– Walking Wounded
Morgue (BLACK)– Pulseless / Non Breathing
The US Coast Guard has a link on their web page to the Canadian Coast Guard manual
http://www.uscg.mil/pvs/docs/MDSM%20description%20May%2011%202010%20draft.pdf
The CCG use S.T.A.R.T. and in their manual it says,
“3. Check Breathing. If not breathing, open the airway. If he does not start breathing tag him as Black. If he starts breathing when airway opened, roll for drainage and tag as Red. If breathing spontaneously but the rate is over 30 per minute tag him as Red.”
So the question is which triage protocol was the USCG working under in Hawaii?
I believe that is the guy in the marshal’s cap who took the video.
“The Director of Public Health in Hawaii just turns out to have been the most unhealthy person on that trip.”
Is that ironic?
I don't believe that image belongs in that sequence of the slide show, do you?
So you’d get the weak woman first and never come back to the unconscious one? You’d pick up a guy who was doing fine except for a gash on his head rather than go back and get the one who is unconscious?
It is Puentes. Look at his Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/notes/ferdinand-puentes/my-kalaupapa-plane-crash-experience/710835728950747
You've got me wondering, do you have a link for that, I would like to read it. That person wrapped up sure looks deceased to me, her jaw has been bandaged beneath her chin(ear to ear)to stop her mouth falling open.
I’m not on facebook, so I can’t see it. But there are plenty of images of the photographer on this thread alone. He’s NOT the person wrapped up on the bed.
The motto of the 21st Century.
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