Help didn’t come in time to rescue overdue boater
By Diana Haecker
A Nome man who was reported overdue as he was traveling by boat from Koyuk to Nome on Monday, October 10, was found dead by a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter search crew two days later. Alaska State Troopers say that Bo Adams, 38, of Nome was found dead on October 12, with “evidence at the scene indicating that he likely succumbed to the elements.”
In what appears to be riddled with communication gaps, the search and rescue response was drawn out over more than 24 hours and resulted in the loss of life.
According to Bo Adams’ sister Brenda, she became worried when her brother didn’t arrive in Nome. She said he left Koyuk around noon on Monday and when he didn’t arrive that night – a boat trip between Koyuk and Nome could take up to nine hours, she was told— she let family know. Troopers say in a dispatch that his last contact was from Rocky Point at 4 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 10.
Bo’s cousin Jeremy Nassuk launched his boat Monday night around 11 p.m. and drove down the coast to look for Bo. Nassuk located Bo Adams’ boat near Bluff, it looked like it was intentionally beached, tied off and seemed to be in working order. Brenda said that maybe Bo parked it as ocean conditions turned choppy. A trooper dispatch notes that there were shoeprints leaving the boat but that the family searching for Bo were unable to locate him. On Tuesday morning, Brenda notified the authorities. At 8:45 a.m she first called Nome Police but the was advised to talk to the troopers and was put through to the trooper dispatch in Fairbanks, thinking that the troopers would send help to retrieve Bo.
Alaska State Troopers launched a state plane from Nome on Tuesday, Oct. 11 at 10:30 a.m. Alaska State Trooper Lt. Brent Johnson, an Anchorage based supervisor to the AST Nome Post, told the Nugget, that the trooper plane with two civilian state employees, a pilot and spotter, were sent out to search the area. “They were the fastest response we had available to try to locate additional clues or additional information to guide us on how we needed to respond,” Johnson said. They spotted a man walking approximately two miles inland from the boat. The trooper dispatch said that terrain conditions did not permit landing “however the individual acknowledged the plane and did not appear to be in destress [sic].” Johnson added that when the pilot and spotter reported back to the troopers here in Nome, “they expressed that the individual that they had observed, didn’t seem to be in dire straits. They didn’t see anything that led them to believe that there was an emergency as far as like an injury. You know, using kind of more strictly medical terms, the person was ambulatory. And he was walking and able to move on his own and didn’t indicate by anything like frantic waving or anything like that, that he was in urgent need of, you know, immediate contact.”
The trooper provided the coordinates to Jeremy Nassuk. When pressed on why the coordinates were not given to local SAR groups, Trooper spokesperson Tim Despain answered, “The coordinates were given to family that had informed AST they were going back out to continue searching.”
Nome SAR Chief Jim West Jr. confirmed that his team was not activated by the troopers and that in the meantime his search and rescue volunteers were getting questions from the public about the search. West said he texted the Nome Post Trooper Sergeant and the answer was that the trooper plane had spotted Adams and again, that he didn’t seem to be in distress. West Jr. told the Nugget it was getting dark by then and he didn’t get any further word from authorities to launch a SAR.
Brenda Adams said she didn’t know that the troopers communicated the coordinates to the cousin who again went out by boat to continue searching on Tuesday. All the while, she thought the troopers would handle getting Bo out. She spoke with the trooper handling the case at 2:45 p.m. who told her that cousin Jeremy and another person went out by boat again to look for Bo. “All day long I was thinking that the troopers are out there… I didn’t know that they gave the responsibility to Jeremy. I didn’t know,” she said.
In the late afternoon she received a text from Jeremy’s InReach, letting her know that they were not able to find Bo. “I called the troopers around five o’clock and was told by a different trooper that the original trooper that was handling the case was off duty and that they have told Jeremy to come back because it was getting dark,” she said.
Lt. Johnson said that when troopers received the information that Nassuk didn’t find Bo, they reassessed the situation. “At that point, the troopers here in Nome contacted our statewide search and rescue coordinator as well as their local command staff to kind of make a decision on where we needed to take efforts next. But again, at this point, we’re not really understanding what’s going on because we’re still not understanding why this person walked away from the boat. Why they walk past cabins and structures that were there? We really don’t know what’s going on. So, at that point, as options were being explored, we contacted RCC about the helicopter,” Johnson said. They learned that there is National Guard helicopter in Nome, but there is no crew to fly it. “So that was unfortunately not an option. But they were aware of that the Coast Guard had a helicopter and a crew available in Kotzebue. The determination was made that they were not going to be able to respond that night. And that decision we made first thing in the morning to have them respond down to continue the search efforts.”
Brenda Adams said that when she called Wednesday morning she was told that the trooper had been flying in the morning and didn’t spot Bo. They asked for Bo’s cell phone number to try and ping his phone to obtain the location, but the phone was turned off or out of battery power.
According to U.S. Coast Guard 17th District Spokesperson Nathan Littlejohn, the U.S. Coast Guard was contacted at 9:49 a.m. and they responded with a helicopter crew from Kotzebue to search in the area where the state plane had seen Adams the day before, assuming to find him alive. Independently —although Nome SAR was not formally activated — volunteers went out and trucked two side-by-sides to Skookum to launch them and head towards Bluff on the Big Hurrah/Skookum trail to search. They were called back as news of Adams’ recovery reached Nome.
At 2 p.m. on Oct. 12 the Coast Guard located Bo Adams deceased. “He was found in a very remote area between Golovin and Nome, on the tundra, in the vicinity of some remote cabins. The crew did not find survival gear, nor a backpack in the vicinity of the deceased man. He was not wearing shoes,” said Littlejohn in an email to the Nugget.
Adams’ body was sent to the State Medical Examiner’s Office in Anchorage for examination.
The family is trying to make sense of this. Brenda Adams said the whole time it wasn’t clear whose responsibility it was to go out and search. She struggled with the troopers’ rationale that Bo wasn’t in need of help as he wasn’t jumping up and down, or waving in distress when the trooper plane spotted him.
“For 28 and a half hours they didn’t call in extra help,” she said.
The troopers, Lt. Johnson said, are reviewing the incident. “If we have a search and rescue like this, where, unfortunately, somebody didn’t survive and was found deceased, we always are going to review our actions to see what we can learn to see if there’s something we could have done different or better. It’s not an official investigation, it’s just an after-action review to determine, you know, what are the lessons learned?” he said.
Asked why SAR wasn’t alerted, he said in the effort to be expedient, the decision was made to leave it to the family members, who “without any prompting” said ‘We’re gearing up we’re heading out right now.”
“At that point, that was the faster response. If we’d have activated Nome search and rescue it would have taken them hours to get down there. Whereas these people were loaded up and ready to go. So we went with the fastest option that was available,” Johnson said.
Asked why no helicopter was chartered to get Adams, Johnson said that it was considered, “but because there was no indication that the person was non-ambulatory, like had a broken leg or couldn’t move or were stuck or were in terrain where they were stuck. You know, he was mobile when the plane flew over so we couldn’t say for sure that you would still be in that location a couple hours later when a helicopter is out there. Frequently we have sent out helicopters to rescue people and the people say ‘I don’t need a helicopter and I don’t need rescue, go away.’ So unfortunately, we don’t always have the option to pay lots of money for helicopters every time we think one might be needed. It’s just not a viable option all the time.”
Funeral and memorial arrangements for Bo Adams are being made and will be announced by the family.
