Protecting Volunteer Firefighters and Emergency Responders Act of 2014

Floor Speech

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I commend my colleague, the Senator from North Dakota, not only for his leadership on so many energy initiatives, but for the proposal he has put forth this afternoon.

I am pleased to be able to join him in support of those various measures--measures that, as he has outlined, will not only as a nation allow us to move forward and take that leadership role, which we so rightly have and should use as something to benefit not only ourselves and our economy, jobs within the Nation, but to benefit other nations. The proposal he has advanced--again, that I am pleased to join him on--is one that allows for incredible jobs and opportunities with the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, provisions that will allow for expedited processing of our LNG exports.

It recognizes, again, that when we produce more in this country--when we produce more of a resource that not only allows us to be more energy secure, but that also helps our friends and allies around the world, it also helps to truly effectively reduce the cost of that energy to American consumers.

How can this possibly be a negative? How can this possibly be bad when it adds to jobs, when it strengthens our economy, and when it makes us more secure as a nation.

There are many win/wins that we see in these energy proposals we have in front of us that Senator Hoeven has offered. But, again, if we only have an opportunity to kind of talk aloud about them but never actually have the chance to move them forward through a legislative process so they can actually become law so we can actually see those benefits play out, it doesn't do us much good.

I appreciate what my colleague has outlined this afternoon through his proposals. I know we will have an opportunity to speak further to them tomorrow, and I look forward to doing that as well.

KING COVE

I want to take 5 minutes in this late afternoon to continue to educate not only my colleagues but folks within this administration and around the country about an injustice that continues to unfold in a small corner of my State, a very remote part of my State in southwestern Alaska for the small community of King Cove. There are about 950 people who live in King Cove.

I have been fighting since I came to the Senate, and before I came my father took up this fight, in an effort to get a small connector road, a small 10-mile, one-lane gravel, noncommercial-use road that will allow the people of King Cove access to an all-weather airport so they can get out in the event of medical emergencies.

We had another one last night. I had an email saying the weather had completely taken over in the gulf in King Cove, and there was an emergency call that went out. It was for a 58-year-old fisherman who had been injured. He had been out on a Seattle-based processor called the M/V Golden Alaska.

This fisherman happened to live in Seattle, and he was onboard this boat. They were out near Unimak Island, which is out toward the chain in the North Pacific, when this fisherman was accidentally sprayed with a high-pressure hose and it severely injured his eye. It was 1 a.m. when this incident happened.

We have this big vessel, a big processing vessel of 305 feet, heading from Dutch Harbor to Seattle when the accident happened. I don't have a map with me, but if we can envision, there is a lot of big, wide-open ocean, and medical care is a long way away. This fisherman couldn't wait for that medical care. The closest deepwater port was King Cove.

King Cove got the word that they had an injured fisherman onboard and they said: Look, our clinic can't handle somebody who has critical needs. See if you can take the boat over to Cold Bay so that not necessarily he can get medical care, he could get on an aircraft out of Cold Bay that could fly him the 600 miles or thereabouts to Anchorage for the medical care he needed. But the problem they faced was they had wind gusts of up to 60 miles per hour. They had rough seas, very rough seas.

The ship's captain said: I am not going into Cold Bay. I am not going to try to hoist a man who has been severely injured in his eye--I am not going to try to hoist him up a 20-foot ladder at the Cold Bay dock. We are not going to do that.

So they went into King Cove, a safer, more protected cove, and they were able to get the gentleman there at 11:30 a.m. The physician's assistant--we don't have a doctor in King Cove, we have a PA, somebody who basically does a good job in stabilizing folks. She contacted the emergency room in Anchorage.

The ER folks said: Look, you have to get this guy to an ophthalmologist as soon as you possibly can in order to preserve as much of his eyesight as possible.

As I mentioned, not only does King Cove not have a doctor, they don't have any kind of a eye specialist. The nearest ophthalmologist is in Anchorage, more than 600 miles away.

The PA, Katie Eby, did what health professionals at the clinic always do in an emergency like this. She calls for help to our Coast Guard. She begs the Coast Guard to come. The Coast Guard says they will come, but they can't come now. They can't chance the weather to get in there. They are not going to risk a pilot and his crew to get into this situation where we unnecessarily put even more lives at risk. They said: Look, we are going to have to wait until the conditions improve and the winds die down. So the physician's assistant tries to stabilize the fisherman, manage his pain as best she can and basically she waits, holding the hand of a man and telling him the Coast Guard will come.

The Coast Guard did finally make it in around 3 in the afternoon the next day. So this injured fisherman waited 13 hours for the winds to settle.

The problem with this story, of course, is there were other alternatives for this fisherman who had been injured, who had to wait in pain wondering if he was going to go blind, if he was going to completely lose his eyesight while he was waiting for the Coast Guard helicopter to come in, to pluck him out, to fly him over to Cold Bay, and have a flight take him to Anchorage. The other alternative--the safe, reliable, affordable way out is a 10-mile, one-lane, gravel, noncommercial-use road. If that fisherman could have been put in an ambulance and taken across that road, a dozen hours could have been spared.

Yesterday's medevac marks the fifth medevac by the Coast Guard in this current year. In 2014, we have had five Coast Guard medevacs. Keep in mind, each one of these medevacs costs around $210,000 per flight. So for those who are saying we can't have a road in King Cove because it is going to cost the taxpayers money, it is costing the taxpayers money because we are footing the bill for the Coast Guard.

Thank goodness the Coast Guard is there. But we are also putting the lives of these men and women--our fine coasties--at risk when we are doing this. If we had a road, who is building the road? It is the State of Alaska. Who is maintaining the road? It is the Aleutians East Borough. This is not the U.S. taxpayer who is paying for this, again, 10-mile, one-lane, gravel, noncommercial-use road.

There are options here. But the Secretary of the Interior has determined she wants to look at other options. She wants to find other alternatives. The fact of the matter is we have been looking at alternatives for a long time now, and those alternatives have been tried and failed or studied and reviewed and discarded.

But the one thing we are pretty sure of is that this fisherman from Seattle who was injured and had to wait 13 hours to get out--we are pretty sure we could have put him on an ambulance across that road--if one existed--and he would not have had to wait for 12 hours.

We are pretty sure that the 63-year-old woman who suffered heart issues on Valentine's Day and had to wait hours and hours for the Coast Guard to pluck her out of King Cove before she was able to safely make it to the hospital in Anchorage, we are pretty sure she could have been spared some of that agony.

We are pretty sure that a couple of weeks ago when a father who had been crushed by a 600-pound crab pot--his pelvis crushed and his legs broken--that for hours and hours and hours he waited in the King Cove clinic to get medevaced out, and of the fact that his infant son, a 1-month old baby named Wyatt who was there in respiratory distress also had to be medevaced out on the same day, only that baby had to make it through the night in the arms of the physician's assistant, and the PA knowing and feeling the infant was in distress and actually feeling him stop breathing.

If we had a road in place, with the agony of not only the individuals who have been injured but the loved ones who care about them, there are better alternatives, and, it is very clear to me, alternatives that work for the people who live there and the people who are in the area--the fishermen.

Maybe I am taking this a little too personally because my oldest son crabbed in the Bering Sea this winter. He was out in those waters. He was out in that foul weather. He was working in a very dangerous industry. Anybody who has ever watched "Deadliest Catch'' knows what I am talking about. Both my sons fish in these areas. They go through the Gulf of Alaska. They go through Nunivak Pass every year as fishermen. If something should happen to them or to somebody else on their crew, and the closest deepwater port for them happened to be King Cove but the weather was to the ground, I want a road for them.

I want a road for the people in King Cove. I want a road for the Seattle fisherman who is transiting back. It is a lifeline. It is a way to get to help. Right now, the one thing keeping these people from getting help is the Secretary of the Interior because she has concluded that we cannot build a 10-mile, one-lane, gravel, noncommercial-use road without disturbing the waterfowl, the black brant, and the geese that go through the Izembek.

We have all heard my story on this many times before. We know we can build this small road and have it coexist peacefully with the birds that go through there. We know the people who live there will continue to care for the waterfowl and the wildlife just as they have for thousands of years.

I don't want to keep coming to the floor and ranting about why we need this road. I don't want to make it appear we are sensationalizing the injuries of men, women, and children for the purpose of winning this fight. But I am not going to have somebody die out there when we could have found a safer and saner path forward.

So I am going to keep coming to the floor. I hope the Secretary of the Interior is listening, that folks in the administration are listening, and that they understand we in Alaska can be responsible for the lands where we live, and we can provide for the health and safety of those who are out there and those who are transiting through. But we need this Secretary to do the right thing for the people of the State of Alaska and provide for a life-saving road.

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