Romance and Tragedy at Sea

May 23, 2007 — -- Rose Bard went to sea on a fishing vessel to change the pace of her life.

"Sometimes, I'd go out on the side of the boat, and you just look out at the water," she said. "And at night, you can see every star in the sky. The stars light up the water, and you can see every crater on the moon."

The story of her last voyage, which ended during a storm at sea, still recurs in her nightmares.

The ship on which she was working, the Excellence, was a floating factory. The international crew on the ship lived and worked together for months at a time, processing fish caught by other vessels.

In October 2005, it was positioned off the coast of Russia in the Bering Sea.

"I was a quality-control technician," Bard said. "We check the bacteria in the machines. We check the product to make sure it is at the right quality. We make sure the factory deck doesn't have too much fish guts or, you know, stuff like that on it."

Bard was also a single mother, with a daughter who stayed with relatives when Bard went to sea to earn a living.

During the two-month voyage to the Bering Sea in 2005, Bard was also having an onboard romance with another worker, Alex Laigo.

On the morning of October16, she gave herself a pregnancy test. It was positive. The only other person she told, just before she started a new shift, was her friend, Ruby Oliver.

"And I asked if Alex knew," Oliver said. "And she said, 'Not yet. I will tell him later on.'"

On the sea, a storm was raging as Bard went to work.

"We had the portholes open at the beginning," she said. "The waves were hitting the side of the boat so hard that they were actually coming through the portholes."

With a high-pressure hose, Bard was cleaning a hopper -- a large, cylindrical vat with augers at the bottom to churn the fish paste as it feeds through. Cleaning the hopper required her to stand inside it.

"When you hit a button, the screws turn, and they feed the meat into the extruder," she said. "They put a packaging bag over the end of the extruder, and the meat is fed into that bag, and then it's sent on down the line."

The machinery had been shut down for maintenance.

When a violent wave struck the ship, another worker was knocked off balance. According to his account, he fell onto the button that turned on the augers.

"I felt something on my feet jerk," Bard said. "At first I just kept thinking, 'Jump.' By the time I even started to react, I just felt. … my ankles being crushed, and my legs dropped out from under me. … It took me maybe two seconds for any noise to exit my mouth. And the first thing was, like, 'Hey, hey, hey!' And then it was just a high-pitched scream."

The machine was turned off within seconds, but Bard's legs had been fed into the augers.

What kept her entire body from tumbling in was the fact that she was straddling a metal bar that spanned the hopper. Laigo, her boyfriend, rushed to the location of the accident.

"I don't know how to say [how I felt]," he said. "For me, I thought it was a nightmare."

Saving Rose's Life

The only way to extract Bard's legs from the augers was to cut the machinery away from her with plasma torches.

Rescue and medical authorities in Alaska were notified immediately. While crews worked to free Bard, her friend Oliver, a nurse, was called to the deck.

"[Bard] asked me, 'Is my baby going to be OK?'" Oliver said. "That's all she asked."

Oliver advised Bard to reveal her pregnancy, in case it was pertinent to the medical treatment she would receive.

Bard was transferred to the ship's infirmary, where Laigo and other crew members helped steady her gurney as the ship tossed in the storm.

Carol Smith, a reporter for the The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, wrote a series of articles about Bard's ordeal that included a meticulous timeline of the rescue mission.

"Nobody really could ascertain how much blood she had lost," Smith said, "because she was wearing her rain gear, and she had her boots on. And nobody wanted to take her boots off."

The Coast Guard helicopter that would be dispatched on the rescue mission was located at Cold Bay, Alaska, nearly 600 miles from where the accident occurred in the Bering Sea.

A C-130 transport plane that would fly backup and, hopefully, take Bard from the helicopter to a hospital was located at Air Station Kodiak, more than 800 miles from the scene.

There was a medical clinic on the tiny island of St. Paul, but even if the rescue helicopter refueled there on its way to rescue Bard, the fishing vessel was still out of its range.

"We had to get the boat headed toward St. Paul so we could rendezvous down in the morning," said Coast Guard Lt. Kerry Blount, the helicopter pilot.

So Lee Vestal, the captain of the Excellence, began heading southeast, to close the distance, but the complications caused by the storm were formidable.

"We found that we were encountering 50 to 60 knot winds right off the nose [of the helicopter]," said Lt. Doug Atkins, Blount's co-pilot. "And that basically meant that our normal two-hour transit from Cold Bay to St. Paul stretched into three and a half hours."

Meanwhile in the C-130, Lt. Cmdr. Craig Breitung kept in radio contact with Vestal aboard the Excellence.

But when the time came to transfer Bard from the ship to the helicopter, the high seas prevented the ship from turning into a more favorable heading for a rescue.

"The captain goes, 'If I turn around, it's not going to be good,'" Breitung said. "'The boat is going to lift and we're going to have problems, and then I'm going to be taking white water over the bow where we need to hoist the patient.' And I said, 'OK. Stay at that downward heading, and just go with the flow.'"

That meant the rescue swimmer, Ben Cournia, would have to make a drop from the helicopter as the craft hovered 150 feet above the deck of a ship that was pitching in the waves.

"I had a lot of adrenalin," Cournia said.

In fact, it was the first time that he had ever attempted a hoist to a boat. By the time he was ready, 17 hours had passed since Bard had been injured.

"It was quite a rush, knowing that I was in the middle of the Bering Sea and this girl's life was in our crew's hands," Cournia said.

Getting Rescued by Helicopter

John Overholt, a U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer 1st Class, knew that Cournia's life was in his hands as he operated the hoist.

"When he was going down, the boat was rolling left and right while it was pitching," Overholt said. "And he was approximately 10 feet from the deck. And all of a sudden, the boat rolled underneath us."

"I was 10 to 15 feet above the deck and something happened," Cournia said. "The ship took a roll or something, and the boat came up and I was laying [on deck], looking up at the helicopter."

Cournia had landed safely on deck. Bard was taken from the infirmary to the ship's galley and placed on a table.

Cournia strapped her into a basket, called a litter, gave her oxygen, and wrapped her in blankets. Then she was carried onto the deck for the airlift.

"From there, I signaled for the rescue hook. They sent down a trail line, and I attached the rescue hook to our litter, and we sent her up," Cournia said.

Bard was hoisted 150 feet off the deck, through the gusting winds, and into the Jayhawk helicopter.

"The only part of me that was actually uncovered was my face," Bard said. "Everything else on me they had bundled up and covered with wool blankets and stuff. … When they actually started lifting me, and [the litter] started spinning, I was just like, 'Holy crap,' you know?' It was like being on a ride at an amusement park."

"I just remember her coming up on the aircraft," Blount said. "She was wrapped in blankets and everything else. We could see her face sticking out, but she was staying tough."

A Major Hurdle in the Rescue

Although Bard was safely in the helicopter, the pilots knew the crisis wasn't over.

The C-130 transport plane couldn't continue with the original plan to land at the island of St. Paul to meet the helicopter carrying Bard.

"It was immediately apparent that they would not be able to land at St. Paul due to the severe crosswinds," Atkins said. "And fuel was getting tight at that point."

After determining that a tail wind would allow the helicopter to make it to another island, St. George, the Jayhawk and the C-130 headed there.

Breitung landed his C-130 on a short gravel runway, and Bard was transferred from the helicopter to the plane for her flight to an emergency room in Anchorage.

In the emergency room, "I started crying: 'Don't cut my legs off,'" Bard said.

But the damage was too severe.

"The next time I woke up, I was in the recovery room," Bard said. "And then I opened my eyes and I looked down, and there was nothing there."

Laigo left the ship to be with Bard as soon as he could. Her legs had been amputated below the knees. "I don't care," he said to her.

He stayed with her as she began a painful period of rehabilitation, marked by concern for the welfare and condition of the unborn child she was carrying.

While she was pregnant, she learned to use prosthetic devices, which had to be remade several times.

"Her body was changing all the time," said Smith, the reporter. "And they'd no sooner make something, then they'd have to make it again."

Laigo remained supportive.

"If the baby made it this far," he said to Bard, "he's a fighter, and he deserves to be here."

On June 21, 2006, everyone learned that Laigo was right.

Smith was among those in the hospital room when the child, a boy named Aries, was born.

"It was really a very emotional moment. He had a head of black hair, and was a very mellow baby."

"I remember just looking at him and thinking how perfect he was," Bard said. "I went through 20 hours of trauma, and he still stayed strong."

The Same Person, a Different Life

Bard recently reached a settlement with the maritime insurance company representing the owners of the boat on which she was injured.

She and Laigo plan to be married, but she doesn't want a ceremony until she has progressed far enough in her rehabilitation to stand at the altar.

The Coast Guard crews involved in her rescue have kept up with her story, even as they've gone on to new assignments. The crew members on the fishing vessel the Excellence have stayed in touch as well.

"They cared a lot about her," Smith said. "I know when her baby was born, they announced it on the PA system. The boat was at sea, and everybody cheered."

Bard says she's learned that "every day is something precious, because anything can happen. One day you might have everything, and the next day you might not. You're the same person, but it's a different life."

This report originally aired on October 13, 2006.