On an ordinary Wednesday at U.S. Coast Guard Station Washington, D.C., Lt. Cmdr. Kim Jenish had just given her crew a motivating lecture about resilience and staying focused on their goals. She didn’t know that very evening would bring a crisis that would put her words to the test.
Just before 9 p.m. on Jan. 29, an Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter collided with American Airlines Flight 5342 outside Washington, D.C., sending both aircraft plummeting into the Potomac River and leading to the deaths of all 67 people onboard.
Jenish was finishing dinner when she got the call from the unit’s duty officer: a plane had crashed and all available personnel were needed on the water.
The Potomac was freezing, with four to six inches of ice in places, she recalled, and the Coast Guard search-and-rescue boats weren’t designed to operate in those conditions. But the need was urgent, and the Coast Guardsmen went to work, using everything from hammers to weights to break ice around the boat launch so they could enter the water and begin search and rescue. Meanwhile, Station Washington became an incident command post, directing traffic as the river filled with rescue personnel.
“As boats were coming in, I was just using your classic whiteboard, writing, ‘Okay, what boats do we have?’ And then just sending them out and trying to place them,” Jenish recalled, adding that about eight Coast Guard vessels were on the water at a given time. “In those initial six hours that night, my team, we were responsible for taking every Coast Guard asset that arrived and sending them out on the water.”
For their heroic search and recovery efforts, Jenish and her entire Station Washington team are being honored as the Coast Guard Service Members of the Year.
The other team members include: Lt. Craig Oravitz; Lt. Cmdr. Matthew McGarity; Chief Petty Officer Logan Kellogg; Chief Petty Officer Jason Seraphin; Chief Petty Officer Ryan Rawding; Petty Officer 1st Class Tyler McGuinness; Petty Officer 1st Class Daniel Russo; Petty Officer 1st Class Ryan Smith; Petty Officer 1st Class Anthony Wallace; Petty Officer 1st Class James Nugent; Petty Officer 2nd Class Brandon Williams; Petty Officer 3rd Class Fabian Monorrez; Petty Officer 3rd Class Austin Vicars; Petty Officer 3rd Class Ian Frigiola; Petty Officer 3rd Class Danielle Zins; Seaman Nathan Cruz; and Seaman Colten McGalliard.
This was the first mass casualty response effort for Jenish and for the young Coast Guardsmen under her command. The tragedy and heartbreak of the event became real, she said, when she got word from the duty officer, about an hour into the operation, that a SAR team had recovered the first victim.
“I had to take a pause, because it just hit me, hearing that my youngest crew members are pulling up a body,” she recalled. “I think my mamma heart just broke for them.”
It would take days for Station Washington, working with an array of local response units, to recover all the people lost in the crash. For another three weeks, the Coast Guard maintained a safety perimeter on the Potomac, keeping boaters out of the wreckage sites and allowing crash investigators to work unhindered.
The unit came together after the mission was complete to process the tragedy with chaplains and a priority on mental health and recovery. But a week later, Jenish said, they were out on the water again, manning their assigned safety zones. Being recognized as service members of the year, she said, will help the unit come together once more.
“What they did that night was extraordinary — willing to take on that warranted risk, and willing to put out that heart, courage and dedication without being told to,” Jenish said. “I don’t know if closure is the right word, but I think this will certainly [play a] big part in their healing journey.”
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