Chapter 2 - Helicopter Rescue Swimmer Procedure
--D. Survivor Recovery Procedures
----2. Multiple Survivor Procedures
Specifically, Table 2-28 on page 2-53. As plain as day:
"NOTE - When rescuing multiple survivors, the RS must use their best judgment for prioritizing the rescue."
Exactly what Ornot did. He followed established protocol and used his best judgment for prioritizing the rescue. You have exonerated him.
I went and looked up the place you’re talking about, and it’s the place I was talking about before, where it’s talking about if you’ve got a bunch of survivors on a raft. If you throw down the raft or life preservers and somebody isn’t able to get on/in it that would tell you that they need to be the priority for the rescue. The people doing fine, as exhibited by their ability to get on/in a raft or life jacket can wait. And when you get to the people on the raft you obviously have to decide which one goes up first, and then it would make sense to prioritize according to all the information you have.
That is totally different than passing up the most desperate person you’re ever going to find, in order to go searching out whether there’s anybody else who needs you - what? - the same amount? There’s not going to be anybody who needs you more. And once you’ve spent half an hour seeing if everybody else is as bad off as the first person you came upon, then you decide whether you’ll go back to the guy/gal who just died because you were too busy “prioritizing” to actually help anybody.
Like I said before, may this happen to you in your day of need, as you would have it done to others. If this is an acceptable exercise of “discretion” in your estimation then I pity anybody who depends on you for anything.
What Ornot said was that the protocols said he HAD to pass over Fuddy. And that is just not true. Neither the protocols, nor common sense, nor just plain human decency would tell him to pass over a woman that the Coast Guard was REQUIRED to give CPR to, in order to go searching for others who may or may not need him immediately.
It’s sort of like the fire department keeping all their trucks at the station when a massive fire has broken out and people trapped inside a house will certainly die if they aren’t rescued immediately - because there may come in a call where the trucks are needed EVEN MORE, and after all, you have to “prioritize”...
There were 6 planes there. The Coast Guard “rescued” Kawasaki who refused their medical help anyway and drove himself to the hospital after finding his own way to Honolulu, and a man smiling and waving, before they rescued a woman for whom minutes and seconds could have been the difference between life and death. No. Freaking. Way.