ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A man severed his hand while working on a Seattle-based commercial fishing vessel in the Bering sea, the Coast Guard said.
A Coast Guard helicopter crew picked up Patrick Lavlu and flew him to Adak in the Aleutian Islands at about 3 a.m. Friday. Lavlu, 37, severed his right hand shortly before 4 p.m. Thursday while cutting fish with a saw aboard the 238-foot factory trawler Alaska Juris, the Coast Guard said.
The trawler was about 100 miles west of Adak.
The Coast Guard sent a rescue crew from St. Paul Island to Adak, 390 flight miles away. From there, Lavlu was flown by air ambulance to Anchorage, the Coast Guard said.
Idaho
Skiers face hefty bill: A skier and snowboarder lost on Silver Mountain near Kellogg, Idaho, after they ventured out of bounds face thousands of dollars in bills from the resort and the sheriff. Silver Mountain ski area assistant general manager Pat Nowak said he sent a list of expenses to the Shoshone County Sheriff’s Department totaling $8,000. It was unclear what the sheriff could add to that, or what the Missoula, Mont., men will be billed for the cost to rescue them. After Nybo and Michael Ormandy disappeared on Jan. 23, up to 60 volunteers braved near-blizzard conditions to find them. One rescuer was caught in an avalanche and survived by clinging to a tree branch.
Oregon
Search called off: Authorities have called off a search for a U.S. Forest Service contract worker missing since Jan. 26 in the Kalmiopsis Wilderness area near Selma. Todd Morris, 35, of Centralia, Wash., an experienced woodsman, was last seen when he left a remote base camp during a snowstorm to retrieve a hatchet he had left at a survey plot two miles away. "There is virtually no chance of him surviving out there this long — maybe 5 percent at most," said Al Rhodes, emergency services coordinator for the Josephine County Sheriff’s Office. Rhodes said authorities were forced to call of the search Friday evening because even the survival experts searching for Morris suffered hypothermia during rescue efforts.
From Herald news services
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