NAS Whidbey Island crew rescues crash victims from cliffside

A Naval Air Station Whidbey Island search-and-rescue crew hoisted a 20-year-old man from a steep cliff near T-Rex Falls after a vehicle plunged about 250 feet in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest above Wilkeson. Four people were involved in the rollover crash, and one other victim was helped to an extraction point and flown to a hospital by Airlift Northwest.

The Air Force Rescue Coordination Center called for Navy help after Pierce County fire and sheriff’s crews determined that two of the victims could not be safely reached from the ground. The rescue unfolded in darkness, freezing temperatures, heavy fog and steep terrain, turning a remote crash scene in Pierce County into a multi-agency operation that ground crews could not finish on their own.

The first crash alert came at about 10:20 p.m. to 10:21 p.m. on June 25, when an iPhone SOS crash-detection alert helped trigger the response. Crews reached the trapped victims around 1:13 a.m., and the full operation lasted nearly 11 hours before the final extrication was complete. Two of the four people in the vehicle did not need airlift transport.

Station SAR Whidbey had already logged 20 missions this calendar year, including five medevacs, two searches and 12 rescues. The unit operates three MH-60S Seahawk helicopters and can maintain either a 15-minute or 30-minute alert posture, with 10 pilots, eight rescue aircrewmen and three SAR medical technicians ready for mountain, overwater and night operations.

The crash site sat about 12 miles up a rugged mountain road near NF110 in the Carbon River area, and the nearest civilian crews still needed federal aviation support to get the victims out safely.