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A team from Station Washington were honored as the 2025 Coast Guardsmen of the Year for their work in the wake of a mid-air collision near the Pentagon.
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0:01
As I'm entering the base, I see a line of red and white lights of emergency vehicles just everywhere
0:09
To me, it looked like hundreds of responding assets immediately there. And that was coupled with that overwhelming smell of jet fuel
0:17
You could feel it all around your eyes, just up in your nose, just there
0:23
It just was a massive debris field, chunks of debris floating everywhere
0:27
The radio, they say 60 souls. We were looking for 60 souls. And that just stuck to me
0:36
I think everyone's mine at the time
0:54
was still trying to understand exactly what was happening. We didn't have any other details other than a plane had crashed
1:02
I can say that that day was probably the fastest day I've seen people get ready
1:10
Once we came out of the marina and were on scene, that's when we started just passing on the stuff that we were seeing firsthand
1:18
And we saw this large piece of metal floating there, and we came up on it to see and turned out to be a helicopter
1:26
And yeah, when you see that, it's just unbelievable. During the first stage of that night
1:44
the focus was just trying to get as much information as you can
1:48
The second stage was now realizing this was going to take more than just a night
1:54
When we were searching and we came across our first victim and again just unbelievable another shocking thing you know that you don
2:09
expect to come across i don't think you can mentally shift from search and rescue to search
2:16
and recovery effectively i think we're trained to always be in search and rescue mode they don't go
2:23
out there searching for a victim. They go out there searching for a person. The mission evolved
2:30
into becoming the mission to reunite all 67 families and friends with their loved ones to
2:36
bring them the much-needed closure that night. We were able to recover all 67 victims, three of
2:43
which were U.S. Army service members. You have to have some sort of order to the chaos
3:02
I commend Lieutenant Commander Jenish for maintaining that order through everything that was going on with composure and skill
3:09
Lieutenant Rabbits was there to fill the gaps of what everyone needed that night
3:15
Craig was definitely everywhere. In days following, our focus as a unit was to heal
3:20
and to recognize that resources are available and that we really emphasize the importance to seek professional mental health, to talk it out
3:33
As far as what's next for Station Washington, we truly have become a stronger station
3:38
Station Washington is going to continue to train, going to continue to train, maintain, and operate
3:42
We have great people here that love to do their job. At the end of the day, we were just doing our job
3:47
and I think we're going to continue to do it without a doubt, especially with the brothers and sisters we have here
3:52
the men and women that we serve alongside with
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