When you call the US Coast Guard - Smarter Every Day 265

Hey! It's me, Destin. Welcome back to Smarter Every Day! I recently got to spend some time with the United States Coast Guard, and I gotta say, I was blown away. A lot of people don't even know about the Coast Guard or think about the Coast Guard, but it's awesome! There's so much to learn here. For example, did you know the US Coast Guard was originally thought of by Alexander Hamilton? It totally was! You can read about it in the Federalist Papers. The Coast Guard is America's oldest defense force, actually four years older than the Navy.

I ended up learning so much about a whole bunch of different cool stuff that there's no way I could fit it into one episode. Yes sir! So welcome to the Smarter Every Day deep dive series into the U.S. Coast Guard. In this series, we're going to get to explore what the Coast Guard is and how it is that they do what they do. The equipment is rad, the tactics are smart, but it's the people that impressed me the most. Many of these folks are really young; they're out there every day thinking ahead, training ahead to be able to help you and your family and friends if you ever need it.

But there's actually far more to the Coast Guard than I realized. Seriously! Did you know the Coast Guard has huge boats like this? These things obviously do more than just pluck people out of the water when they're in distress, but getting plucked out of the water is a pretty good place to start. You're bobbing out in the ocean because your boat sank like this one—we'll see that in a later episode—and the Coast Guard shows up over the horizon and pulls you to safety. How does that happen? Obviously, the boats and helicopters and all the gear is really awesome, and we'll go through those in later episodes.

But how are all these assets coordinated before that basket comes down and plucks you out of the water? A whole bunch of decisions have been made by many teams in many different places. That's what I want to learn about today—how does a rescue mission start and how does it finish? So today, let's go get smarter every day and learn about the organization of the U.S. Coast Guard! Is this artwork awesome or what? An artist named Penny made that. It is so awesome! Thank you so much, Penny!

Okay, let's get this thing started. I live in North Alabama, and a lot of the Coast Guard station on the coast. There's other places as well, but for today, we're gonna go down to the coast to go to Mobile, Alabama, to what the Coast Guard calls Sector Mobile. It's at Sector Mobile where I met Lieutenant Trevor Valette, who told me we were about to head into the room where they coordinate search and rescue operations.

When we got inside, the first thing we did is go through a secured door to a place where people aren't usually allowed to film, so this felt pretty special. We then walked through a glass door into a room that was far more important than I realized. What happens in this room could literally mean life or death for some people.

"Are you guys am I okay to film in here?"

"Just not that you see the red stickers."

"Got it, understood. Not that of the cameras, but everything else you're good to go."

"All right, sounds good!"

"That besides—okay, after the fact, we can blur anything and everything—we'll make sure of that."

"So, we're in the command center."

"So, is that the right way of saying it?"

"Command center."

"Yes."

"Okay, I'm Destin."

"Hi, Kate."

"Kate, pleasure to meet you! How's it going?"

"Okay, so I'm the command center chief."

"Pleasure to meet you!"

"And Ms. Sullivan is the enforcement chief for Sector."

"So we're peers!"

"Nice to meet you! Um, kind of everything kind of flows together between the departments. We all own a little piece of the pie when it comes to Coast Guard missions. We have several different positions here, um, so everything from our comms room to our search and rescue desk to our marine safety kind of multi-mission desk over here, our SU, our situation unit, to our command duty officer, who kind of sees, is kind of the watch captain."

"So these, if I understand correctly, so these four desks right here you each have a different responsibility?"

"What are you doing over here?"

"I'm just a situation unit, mainly in charge of keeping track of common operating picture between Eastern AOR and Western Union waters—the weather, our assets, and the other plane events happening."

"Okay, in the area. So when you say AOR—Area of Responsibility—you told me that earlier, Lieutenant Valette."

"So Area of Responsibility. So what's Eastern AOR and what's Western AOR?"

"Western AOR is the Pearl River's west bank."

"Uh-huh."

"Eastern AOR is the Jefferson County line."

"I can't—okay, cool! So all the Gulf Coast to the chunk of it until the part of Florida that turns down a bit—that's crazy!"

"Okay, so we have about 435 nautical miles of coastline that we oversee. You never know what you're going to get. Like I said, last night, I mean, as we roll into the search and rescue season, one day it may be a few cases. I can tell you the last 24 hours have been extremely busy. We've had everything from prevention cases to search and rescue cases to law enforcement cases."

"So at this point, they were just about to do a change of watch, where the watch commander that we were just speaking to gets replaced for the next shift, and he was sharing the status and history of the open cases when I heard this sound. My buddy George, who would come with me in case more than one thing happened at once, turned on a second camera."

"What's going on, Kevin? You said you were missing some of your family members."

"Okay, so apparently a call just came in, and this is real, and it feels weird. This past Wednesday, okay? And so, he was dropping your son off on Wednesday—that's when you last heard from them—and where did you drop them off at? Do you know the marina or harbor? And when were they due to their destination? And what destination point?"

"So, I went to this room because I wanted to understand how search and rescue worked, right? But when I started actually listening to what Smith was saying and understood how she was doing it, I realized this was for keeps—like, this is real and I started to feel like I shouldn't be in the room."

"Okay, yeah, I'm going to get a little bit more information. I just wanted to get that back story from you. Um, so give me a description of the vessel, first of all."

"So you said it was a sailing vessel? So is this normal?"

"So right now we are still really in the early stages of this gathering information.”

“So she’s trying to find locations?”

“Yeah, so what we’ll do, a lot of these cases when it's overdue, what we'll do is let’s say for instance it’s a—um—a member went out fishing and never came back. So we’ll send resources down to the boat ramp to see if the truck and trailer are still there. If it is, our, uh, you know, our concern goes up."

"So before it's a search and rescue, it feels like an investigation?"

"It is! There is! There's significant investigative work that goes into specifically with an overdue case."

"Oh, that’s weird! I didn’t expect that! I kind of thought it was cut and dry, like hey, this person’s in distress, this person is lost at this location."

"But she’s like scrolling the map and I tell you one of the one of the newer pieces of technology we have here is called i-911. So we enter our phone number here, it goes out, it goes out to the member, they would see it pop up ‘Hey, the Coast Guard's trying to get in touch with you’—they would click the link, it sends that back to here and we’ll populate where they’re at that way we have a position on them."

"There’s four to five key items that we really need to get, you know, positions—always the first one. So if we have a position, we can put resources to their location. Nature of distress, you know, what's the problem? Are you taking on water? Are you on fire? Are you overdue? Is it a medical emergency? Are you just this? Are you broken down? Number of people on board, because you know you always want to know, hey, if we're responding are there multiple people involved? That way when we do conduct a search we have full accountability of everybody on board and then description of the vessel—we want to know what we're looking for, right?"

"So a lot of that is carried out through these checklists through us called an initial search and rescue checklist. So we go through, we try to fill out all that information. That way when we put resources out there, they're set up for success to locate the vessel and to render assistance as needed."

"One thing that happened that I didn't expect, when the phone rang, I heard emotion in her voice like she was empathetic towards the person that was clearly in distress, and so there's a component there too where you're trying to manage people's hope and—oh yeah! Things like—I tell you, we are the lifeline between families and the mariners."

"All right, so that's what it looks like to open a case with the Coast Guard, from the Coast Guard's perspective, which was admittedly a little bit more dramatic than I was expecting! But it's very interesting and we'll come back to Smith in the future. But what I want to do now is go speak to someone we met earlier about what it’s like to open a case versus what it’s like to close a case—Lieutenant Commander Kate Sullivan."

"So you were telling me that anybody can open a case, correct?"

"A phone call comes in, the case starts, right?"

"Correct! So starting a case is a flare or a phone call. It could be lots of different things or a radio call or what else?"

"There's 16 different types of distress signals in the—"

"Really?"

"Correct, 16. Please don’t make me go through all 16 of them!"

"Is this good or bad?"

"So all those things start the case, correct? But only a few people can close the case, or I guess it depends on how the case ends. Only a few people can suspend a case."

"Suspend? Suspend—what does that word mean?"

"Suspend means that whatever we are looking for, we did not find."

"Okay, so a lot of different options available. Let’s say somebody says ‘mayday, mayday’ over the radio. If we don’t find who made that broadcast, we do search efforts; we never found, we suspend the case. We get a report of flares; we did searching, we never find who shot the flares, we suspend that. There’s a person known to be missing we cannot find the person after extensive searching—we suspend.' Now we close if same instance, person shot off flares, we do searching, we find the people that shot the flares, they said ‘I shot those flares,’ we can close that case because we were able to correlate whatever the distress was with the person who did that."

"Uh, initiated the distress—the search and rescue system, right? So that's the difference between suspending, suspending whatever you're looking for you didn't find or you didn't correlate or closing, you found what you were looking for or you correlated whatever the distress was with whomever initiated."

"I think I'm getting it! So, so there's ways that cases start, you close the case if you find the thing, correct? You suspend the case if you can't find the thing and certain criteria have been met, correct? The goal is to end the case in a favorable way as quickly as possible, and you go until you find a resolution or you suspend the case because continuing to search will not garner any different results."

"In my mind, there’s—you send out aircraft, and they'll search in a zigzag pattern. Is that real?"

"It very much is real! There are numerous types of patterns that, you know, I'm sure the watch can show you, whether it's a creeping line pattern, whether it's a parallel search pattern. So in a future episode, we're going to talk about those search patterns out over the water, specifically a Victor Sierra. But for now, let's go back to the call center where Smith is still working that first case and another call has come in."

"We got another one. I just heard each marine police call out to Alabama Marine and talking about a vessel taking on water by, uh, by the sandbar.”

“Probably not gonna make it.”

"We had another call come in for a vessel taking on water. I went to the radio room to listen in and try to figure out what was going on."

"Marine Three, this is Coast Guard on Channel 22 Alpha. Could I get a good brief description on what the vessel looks like, over?"

"Uh, blue out of 24-foot center console, uh, Alabama registration."

"Roger, that's a good copy. Is there a vessel name over?"

"Could I get a good GPS position from them at this point? We're not equipped."

"Roger, just to confirm, near Bird Island, directly south of Bird Island by about 50 yards."

"Roger, good copy, south of Bird Island. Please stand by 22."

"But it was two other government agencies that are talking to each other about the vessel, so they're already on scene with the vessel, but they shifted off the channel, so we can't—now I'm gonna have to make a phone call and see if I can get some other information about it."

"Okay, so if you have someone on scene, do you guys need to show up?"

"Well, we still, if the vessel sinks, then we still gotta look at make sure they get recovered, right? But then you gotta look at the other missions, which is pollution, and how are they gonna recover that vessel, you know? So it's not a hazard navigation, so there's a whole bunch of different things that go into it that you have to kind of prioritize: everything from search to rescue to pollution to hazards, you know? So there’s a big field that goes into it of the way you gotta think about it. So when the whole bunch of things start coming in, then you gotta kind of prioritize; first search and rescue, then the rest of your missions."

"Right? We're kind of in the trenches here, and what I want to do now is zoom out a little bit. I want to understand the overall context of where we're at within the Coast Guard."

Lieutenant Valette walked me across the base. We saw all kinds of cool stuff we'll talk about in future episodes, but for now, let's go meet the person in charge.

"Okay, so I'm here with Captain Allen, and you're over Sector Mobile, correct?"

"I am. I'm the sector commander for Mobile."

"Okay, so my understanding from a conversation we had earlier is that you've got Coast Guard stations and that rolls up to sector, and then sector rolls up to district, and then district rolls up to Atlantic area—"

"Atlantic area and then headquarters."

"And then headquarters, which is in D.C., right?"

"That's right! That's where our commandant and vice commandant are."

"Do they, like, give you information that you have to obey or that goes down through the district?"

"Actually, headquarters creates policy for us, and, um, we're more operational units. So with sector, under the sector umbrella, we have 18 units. Essentially we have six boat stations, we have six Coast Guard cutters, we have five Aids to Navigation teams, and we have one marine safety detachment which is kind of like one of our many units all the way in Panama City."

"You're keeping navigational beacons going?"

"That's right! You're doing search and rescue and then what else?"

"We, uh, drug enforcement. We do actually—we have 11 statutory missions and we do all of them except for Arctic operations, ice-breaking. For search and rescue, that’s our primary here."

"Do you have a map of the area under your authority? Is there a map here we can look at?"

"Or it's not called a map, right? Chart?"

"A chart. Um, do we have a chart we can look at?"

"So right here is—can I come in here?"

"Absolutely. Our area of responsibility, which is Mississippi, Alabama, and northwest Florida over to Saint Mark's, which is near Tallahassee."

"Okay, so you are here in Mobile?"

"That's correct."

"And so you deploy to all these areas, right?"

"We actually have stations and cutters in all these areas, so it's not so much a deployment, you're just there already."

"We're there already. We're ready to respond. We respond within a half an hour at a moment's notice. We also have units in Northern Alabama, which you see here are two river systems that are in there."

"Oh yeah, like Alabama has some of—like, is it true we have more interstate waterways per unit area than almost any other state?"

"That is true."

"Is it really?"

"Absolutely! And we have a lot of commerce on these rivers as well—barges and everything—all the goods that come up and down the river, really. And then we have a lot of vessels that come in and out of ports along the coast here. We have five deep-water ports, we have two small ports as well, and, uh, I'm the captain of port for all of those ports as well to keep those ports operational."

"Oh really?"

"Right. I'm starting to understand the magnitude of the person I’m speaking to! Okay, I'm sorry! So you're in control of the port?"

"I, uh, oversee the port. We're cut—the Coast Guard's kind of like the doctors on the water. If anything goes wrong, we fix it."

"During the hurricane, I have the authority to close the ports and then we reopen them as soon as possible."

"That's a big deal!"

"It is! It is so that's a responsibility."

"Have you ever done that?"

"I have actually—during this last season, it was a record season. We had to open and close the ports many times—I think about five times we had to do this. But we don't do it in a vacuum! I certainly don't do it in a vacuum! I do it with our partners, our industry partners, our port partners, our pilots that are out there piloting the vessels in and out. I don't make the decision alone. I get lots of input and feedback before I do anything like that."

"So this was a great chat with Captain Allen, but for now we still have an open case in the command center. I still feel things about that, and if you recall there’s two ways that a case can end: it’s either suspended or closed. So let’s go back and find out what happened there."

"And it’s Lieutenant Smith!"

"Yeah! Lieutenant Junior Grade Smith."

"Oh, pleasure to meet you! I appreciate the promotion, but I’m not there yet."

"Sounds good! So, two things I noticed: you had a special inflection in your voice when you answered the phone. Yeah, what was that about? Like you were being, like, you wanted them to feel comfort and care. Did not expect that, right? What were you doing there?"

"Um, one, it's, you know, kind of stressful when you're dealing with anybody who's concerned, right? If you're calling worried about your loved ones, like, you don't want to feel panicky. It makes you forget things! It makes you kind of stress out, and to, like, maybe escalate the situation. So we just want to, like, start at the baseline and make sure we are calm, cool, collected so we can get as much information as we can. Because the more information we have, the more we can help, the faster we can help, so that's really important! Plus just from a personal standpoint too, I would want to be comforted a little bit too—like make sure everyone is helping me isn’t panicking as well. And that’s kind of a key component to what we do back here is yes we deal with real high-stress situations but we can’t get stressed on top of that because we need to think clearly. We need to be smooth when we respond to everything."

"So, what can you walk me through the thing that you filled out here?"

"Oh, I kind of do things a little bit backwards just because of the way my brain—I like taking long-hand notes, just getting as much information. I have this as a reference to make sure I'm asking the right questions, but my handwriting is a little too sloppy to fill out this neatly, so I usually take it all on a chronological sheet. This is just like our standard note-taking for any call that comes in, and then I transfer that information to our QRC, so our quick response check sheet."

"This is the QRC?"

"Yes, and we have one for each individual case that may occur. So this individual was calling because he was concerned about family members that went on a sailing voyage that he hadn't heard from in a couple of days, so they were going to be unreported is what we would classify that because he wasn't due back until June 2nd, so he wasn’t technically late just yet, but there was enough concern because he hasn't been hearing from him. So this is all the information that we've kind of gathered as the Coast Guard that helps us determine what actions to take from this particular case."

"So, uh, asking a lot of where were they going? Where did you last see them?"

"Yeah, I heard that you were saying, were they supposed to be—did they mention they were gonna go explore a cave or—"

"You didn’t say that—but you know, yeah, just what they were gonna do. So were you—what happened to resolve it? Because when you answered the phone I was like ‘I'm just gonna film this call center’ and then you answer the phone, and everything got serious for me real quick, right? Yeah, and then it was resolved! I would—I need you to tell me why things are good now!"

"Yeah, things are good because as we're doing all the investigative work—the individual he was concerned about called back finally, or texted rather, so—"

"And how long had this individual been lost?"

"Three days. So, you know, just enough to concern—you know? And we're gonna be concerned if everybody else is concerned too."

"So were they a little embarrassed? Like, were they—"

"They waited three days to call here or—"

"Well, no! He—so the family member called us today because he figured they were on a sailing voyage exploring around, maybe they just had fun, lost track of time. But after three days, he thought I should have heard from them by now—he got the text message from his family member saying ‘Hey, sorry we’re okay!’ He did not realize the individual that’s on the sailboat that we were already involved at this point. And so I don’t know if they’re embarrassed or not—they shouldn’t be! I mean, if you're out on the water, yes, please check in with your loved ones because otherwise they get worried, we get worried—it becomes a big deal!"

"Um, like how—what did you feel like? Did you kind of like mentally roll your eyes, like, oh, they called me?"

"No! Just an immediate relief because this is, you know, you start automatically thinking worst-case scenario. Like I think we’re kind of all pre-programmed to think that way. It’s like, all right, if this is the worst-case scenario, what do we have to do? And so, you know, I'm already starting to mentally roll through; once I get all this information, what we’re going to have to do—which would entail quite a bit—but when somebody is found, that’s our ultimate goal. So if that happens without our help, I’m just happy that they are okay!"

"So that’s the search and rescue desk over there. I see a bunch of phones. I feel like I'm in the way! Imagine being a member of a force whose job is to save lives—that's incredible! The Coast Guard is not a part of the Department of Defense; they're part of the Department of Homeland Security, and they wake up every day thinking about what they can do to be ready to save someone. Semper Paratus: always ready! I feel incredibly blessed to make a series like this. We're gonna get like ridiculous access! We're gonna go learn what it's like to be a rescue swimmer; we're gonna talk to the pilots, we're gonna get up in the helicopter in New Orleans, we're gonna do so much stuff that I just really don't want you to miss it! It's incredible!

So please consider subscribing if you think you're into it. If not, no big deal! But I think you're really going to enjoy what's coming!

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Thank you to Brilliant for supporting Smarter Every Day! Thank you for considering supporting the sponsor because in turn that supports Smarter Every Day! They're charts, they're not maps! Sharks! So you don't compromise it! Teach you that on the sub! That's a little dig at the Navy there—he's referencing the submarine deep dive series. I look forward to seeing how the Coast Guard series stacks up against the Navy series because, as you know, the Coast Guard and the Navy, they go back and forth a little bit. We'll see that in the future! Anyway, I hope you enjoy this series and feel free to subscribe if you're interested!

I'm Destin, you're getting smarter every day! Have a good one! Bye!