July 6, Sunday – Bystander

Saturday was spent just hanging out around the old state park cleaning house and the Jetta. This morning I decided to check out the village of Galilee, which is about the size of La Conner, my home town. Block Island, which lies thirteen miles off shore, has a ferry service to Galilee. The small vehicle ferry carries about 30 cars and because the ferry is ocean going with a sharp bow, all the cars are required to back up and into the ferry. The ferry I watched loading was famous because it was involved in a collision with a Coast Guard buoy tender just five days before and had a large dent in her bow stem to prove it. In the newspaper article it said that a boat appeared out of the dense fog to the ferry’s left. Both boats were at the time of the collision were going very slowly. The article also mentioned that 2,000 pounds of sea food on board that was supplying the island for the long weekend had to be toss out due to the long time of the accident investigation. I saw the bow bump as it loaded cars.
I wandered down to the small Coast Guard Station situated on main street just in time to see their crew jump on their 25 footer and blast out with blue lights and siren. I was interested in the operations because of my work as the Trainer for the Skagit Bay Search and Rescue. This was the beginning of my 2 and a half hour watch as activity hummed around the station. Emergency vehicles were everywhere on the street. Here’s the run down:
1. 8 year old girl fell out of a two story window on Block Island - Coast Guard transported from the island to the station transferred to fire rescue
2. Girl fell off of a horse on Block Island and was transferred on the high-speed passenger ferry and transferred to a fire engine.
3. Boat explosion with two burn victims transported by private boat escorted by CG to the station. Transferred to fire rescue.

At one point there were two fire engines, two fire department ambulances and an Environmental Police vehicle on the street in front of the station.
I could see that our search and rescue team needs to practice stretcher transfers from boat to dock and up the ramp.
It was a busy morning for me keeping track of things.
w