How many victims constitute a mass casualty situation?
USCG has nothing in their protocols about using START. They do have explicit protocols, and the response is supposed to provide enough personnel to handle the number of victims involved. In this case, if you believe the official story, there were 9 people on board so each rescue swimmer had to manage 5 people. Not exactly a mass casualty situation - especially since the victims all had either life jackets or a cushion to hold onto (Kawasaki is in the longer video holding onto a cushion, which blows apart his story about the water being so wild he couldn’t even find the cushions he had thrown out. I wonder why he said that, when he was actually filmed holding onto the cushion...)
The question isn’t how many victims constitute a mass causality event. But how many did the rescue swimmers know there were at the time they jumped into the ocean? 9? 10? 13? 14?
How long was the first rescue swimmer in the water by himself?
How would he know the condition of the other passengers if Fuddy was the first victim he reached? What assumption might he make about the other passengers if Fuddy was the first passenger he reached?