A US Coast Guard helicopter crew cast the visibility is bad and quickly with cars partially submerged in the water near Niagara Falls gorge, then lowered on a hoist rescue swimmer who withdrew from her.
He did not survive.
Video of the rescue effort was awful show petty officer 2nd class Derrian Duryea, in orange suits and with an ax in his left hand, slapped by the wind and spray water as he descended to 80 feet (24 meters) to the car.
After slowly spun and swung past the car, he can hold the passenger side and opened the door.
“When I go down, I really focus on how I was going to get this car when there is, you know, quite a lot of rapids coming into the car right next to Niagara Falls,” said Duryea by phone and then after returning to Selfridge Base National Guard air, Northeast Detroit, where the crew placed.
“The only thing my focus is a window or door where will I enter.” “Fortunately, the car was not locked and I do not need to pull out the window and I could open the passenger side door and pushed against the current,” he said.
Throughout the operation, the helicopter pilot, Lt.
Chris Monacelli and Flight Mechanics Jon Finnerty keeping a wary eye on the ice fog coating the waterfall when the aircraft, including the windows, further restrict what they can see.
“A lot of larger aircraft have deicing capabilities, but we did not,” said Monacelli.
“We had many discussions and training to what we would do if we get into that situation because if you accumulate enough ice on the helicopter, it will fall from the sky.” About two minutes after entering the car, the water surged around the vehicle and above the gorge fell about 50 meters (45 meters) downstream, Duryea appeared and signaled to Finnerty for lifting and drivers who do not move, a woman in her 60s, from the water , “The current was ripping pretty good there and the car was close to the edge of the falls.
If it moves, we do not want him to be dragged with it,” said Finnerty.
It is not clear how the car got into the Niagara River.
Witnesses reported see it hovering near the pedestrian bridge, which was believed to have been entered.
Slippery roads in that area.
Conditions in the air is not much easier, with snow limit visibility to half a mile to Coast Guard crews who had gathered for a training flight in Lake St.
Clair, Michigan, when they were sent to Niagara Falls, New York.
“At one point we really just flying down the road because we see the road and we are trying to avoid a windmill farm just west of Niagara,” said Monacelli.
“So we flew the way for giant windmill popping up like half a mile away from us.” After the rescue, the car remains completely submerged, with only a partially open roof and trunk holes were visible, rapids upstream from American Falls, one of three waterfalls that make up Niagara Falls.
Spectators watched as emergency crews prepared to try to pull the vehicle out of the water.
Authorities said the driver was staying in the area.
His name was not released pending notification of relatives.
New York Park Police Captain Christopher Rola said the swift-water rescue team of its water can not get into the car because of its location.
The police have used drones to determine it occupied.
“It was a tremendous job by the lifeguard,” said Rola at a press conference.
He said rescuers had not been called to a vehicle which is so close to the edge.
He said investigators will try to determine whether the vehicle ended up in the water accidentally or intentionally.
Niagara Falls has an interesting history of the brave who try to cheat death by dropping a waterfall in a homemade tool, and driven by suicide.