How rescuers cheated death in the seething Atlantic

[five_alarm]

GANDER, NL - Sergeant Derek Rogers is a trained scuba diver, mountaineer and paramedic who has helped dozens of people cheat death during his long career in the Canadian Forces. But the search and rescue technician never had to use all of these skills at once until this past weekend, when he and his crewmates fought raging seas, gale-force winds and craggy cliff faces in a desperate race to try to save six fishermen cast adrift in the waters off the shores of eastern Newfoundland. "I've done missions that have been challenging, but I don't think I've done one that brings so many disciplines into play," Sgt. Rogers, 35, said in an interview yesterday. He spoke as crew members gave their first full accounts of a harrowing seven-hour mission, which began aboard a new Cormorant helicopter hovering above 10-metre swells, and ended on land as the rescuers used ropes to climb down sea- and wind-whipped walls of jagged rock to get to the stranded fishermen. At one moment during the mission, the crew had to make the agonizing decision to cut one of their own crewmates loose from a hoist attached to the helicopter -- casting him into an uncertain fate in the raging water below.

Source: The Globe and Mail (http://www.firehall.com/refer.php?url=http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040923/RESCUE23/TPNational/TopStories&linkid=942&parent=news(headlines)&)