West Point, NY – A daring New York Police Department helicopter rescue in darkness and dangerous winds has safely delivered two West Point cadets from an 18-inch-wide ledge where they were stranded on a cliff 500 feet above the ground.
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Police say the 20-year-old men were rescued early Sunday from a nearly vertical rock formation after they became trapped for about 10 hours during a training exercise.
They say the helicopter from the police department’s aviation unit steadied itself against winds above 30 mph as it hovered about 60 to 80 feet above the men. The chopper’s blades were just 20 feet from the rocks.
Aviation unit Capt. James Coan says the men were elated to be rescued at 2 a.m. He says they were treated for hypothermia but were in good condition.
why do such a stupid exercise to begin with?
Why wasn’t the millitary able to do such a rescue?
The first known rescue of the Aviation Unit of the NYCPD was in 1951, when it rescued a steeplejack from a building. Incidentally, #2 , if a cargo ship needs assistance on the ocean, and a cruise ship is in the area, it will be dispatched for rescue operations, without waiting for the Coast Guard. Hence, an NYCPD helicopter was dispatched, as it doesn’t take that long for a rescue chopper to fly from Floyd Bennett Field to West Point.
The NYPD, like the city it serves, never sleeps – even if it means sending a rescue helicopter upstate at a moment’s notice in the dead of night.
“The NYPD is unique in that we are standing by 2-4/7 as a quick-reaction force to answer 911 calls,” said Capt. James Coan, head of the NYPD aviation unit.
Coan’s shift was set to end at midnight Sunday when the phone rang: two West Point cadets were trapped on a mountainside; they had been exposed to freezing temperatures and bitter winds for nearly six hours.
Coan stayed at the office and directed his unit’s on-the-fly response. It ended with the trapped cadets being hoisted onto an air-sea-rescue helicopter as Officer Steve Browning expertly hovered the chopper alongside the cliffside, buffeted by winds gusting at 30 mph.
The aviation unit, part of the elite Special Operations Division, is able to pull off dangerous rescues because Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly stresses having “the best equipment, the best in technology,” Coan said.
But as other emergency-response agencies throughout the tristate area are pinching budget pennies, the NYPD is charging into the gap.
“We actually become a regional asset, certainly after 11 o’clock at night when most agencies, due to the economic constraints, close down their special operations sections ,” Coan said.
Coan, who’s also a lieutenant colonel in the New York Army National Guard, serves as its deputy aviation officer for New York.
He said Army and Air National Guard rescue helicopters are based out of two Long Island airports and one in Albany – but their crews don’t burn the midnight oil.
“Those facilities are not staffed 2-4/7, waiting for a rescue,” he said. “They’re staffed by a skeleton crew of full-time personnel.”
NYPD’s Aviation Unit deserves the highest praise for their dedication and quick responses to situations such as described above. This was a high risk operation in extremely windy conditions and two lives were saved. We can all be proud of their dedication to NYC and our neigboring areas.