NC Coast Guard crew suspends search for man who toppled off cargo ship into frigid Atlantic
A North Carolina-based Coast Guard flight crew suspended its search for a man who fell from a 541-foot refrigerated cargo ship into the cold Atlantic on Saturday morning.
The crew from Coast Guard Station Elizabeth City was flying in a C-130 Hercules military plane, according to a Coast Guard news release.
The man toppled from the Baltic Klipper cargo ship at about midnight, 1,200 miles northeast of Bermuda, according to the Coast Guard.
The Coast Guard also alerted any nearby ships to look for the man.
But on Sunday, the Coast Guard said it had stopped the search that ranged over more than 980 square miles for more than 24 hours.
“Our condolences, thoughts and prayers go out to the family and friends of the individual during these hard times,” Capt. Timothy Eason, chief of incident management for the Coast Guard’s Fifth District, said in a news release.
The sea temperature off Wilmington was 55 degrees on Saturday, according to SeaTemperature.info.
In water between 50 degrees and 60 degrees, exhaustion or unconsciousness can set in within an hour or two, and a person can survive only for up to about 6 hours, according to the cold water survival page of the U.S. Search and Rescue Task Force.
This story was originally published January 9, 2021 at 2:15 PM with the headline "NC Coast Guard crew suspends search for man who toppled off cargo ship into frigid Atlantic."