This was not a drill.
Members of US Coast Guard Air Station Atlantic City nixed a Fleet Week search and rescue demonstration in Manhattan on Memorial Day for the real thing — more than 100 miles away.
The Atlantic City unit, known as the “Blackjacks,” were diverted to a distress call 20 miles off the Jersey shore on Monday after a radio transmission that sounded like “Help” was transmitted just before noon, a US Coast Guard rep told The Post.
“Any sign that there could be potential distress, that’s enough for us to launch [a search and rescue operation] and go search,” the rep said, adding that no other “correlating” evidence, such as a missing person or missing boat, were reported.
The investigation – which was conducted in the area of Barnegat Light, Atlantic City and Cape May in New Jersey, was called off just after 3 p.m., the rep added. Coast Guard Station Cape May also responded to the search.
The Fleet Week demonstration, slated to start at 2 p.m., was set to involve a dummy doll being rescued in the water by a Coast Guard member dropping in from a helicopter.
Some US Coast Guard members at Pier 86 — where the demonstration was planned to take place after the annual Memorial Day commemoration ceremony at the Intrepid Museum — told The Post they were unsurprised the diversion happened due to the popularity of marine-related activities over the holiday weekend.
On Memorial Day weekend, there’s “more than a 50% chance that they are going to get diverted,” one Coast Guard member at the Pier 86 event said.
“A lot of people’s boats have been up [out of the water] for the winter, and now they finally want to get out. Sometimes they don’t take enough fuel, or forget to check the electronics: it could be a number of things.”
An example of frequent calls to the Coast Guard during the busy holiday weekend are for disabled vessels – boats which could simply be adrift while passengers onboard are safe.
Several people have been pulled from the water across the Mid-Atlantic region this weekend, but there haven’t been any reports of missing persons, severe injuries or deaths as a result, according to a Coast Guard rep.
Despite the unexpected absence at the Memorial Day celebration in Manhattan, plenty of other Coast Guard members filled booths outside the Intrepid Museum – including divers based in California and Hawaii.
Diver Richard Rudek, 24, told The Post he assists in underwater maintenance operations – such as underwater construction, repairing buoys and other navigational tools – as well as search and recovery operations “relatively frequently.”
Rudek said his team went out to recover the wreckage of a 2024 helicopter crash in Kauai, Hawaii, which “helped to provide closure to the families.”
His favorite part of his job, however, remains underwater navigation projects – where “you never know what you’re going to get into.”
“Sometimes it’s zero [visibility], you’re in scuba [gear] and holding several thousand pound objects with, basically, balloons. Every job is super different,” he said.
The Coast Guard’s Atlantic Strike Team — which responds to fires, hurricanes, hazmat incidents and other emergencies from East Palestine’s train derailment to the Los Angeles fires to the Baltimore Bridge collapse — was also in attendance at the fleet week event.
“Most Coasties join because they want to help,” said Lieutenant Connie Tobler.
“The best part [of the job] is search and rescue,” said Officer Bismarck Miranda, who recalled an operation a decade ago in which he rescued a 4-year-old and their family 50 miles off the shore of Key West.
“Being able to rescue that and see the baby and the family come back to the United States safely — that was probably the best feeling.”
The post US Coast Guard’s Fleet Week demonstration in NYC nixed due to real offshore search mission on Memorial Day appeared first on New York Post.
