Elizabeth City’s Coast Guard base is helping protect the country

With a sharp, focused gesture, pilot Bill Coty salutes another uniformed man as they pass in the hall.

Lt. J.G. Coty, a Pasquotank County Farm Bureau member, served in the Army for 10 years before making the switch to the Coast Guard. He completed a tour of duty in Iraq, but a family and two young children were calling him closer to home. Joining the Coast Guard allowed him to continue serving his country while remaining close to his family.

“I felt like I had done my duty to protect the rest of the world away from home, and I wanted to be here to protect my own country’s land and people,” Coty says. “I also appreciate the quality of life I have here. I’m here in North Carolina most of the time, which makes it easier on my family.”

The United States Coast Guard has been in operation since Jan. 28, 1915, and the air station in Elizabeth City has been safeguarding the Carolina coastline since 1940, making it one of the oldest air units in the Coast Guard. There are 230 people in the unit, with 45 being officers. Across the country, there are 40,150 men and women on active duty.

Only a portion of what the Coast Guard does is saving lives. In addition, it is responsible for patrolling the coastline and regulating fishing and boating laws.

The Coast Guard’s law enforcement duties range from drug enforcement to protecting the nation’s domestic fisheries by patrolling for illegal fishing in U.S. waters.

“We really try to vary the times we’re on patrol so people don’t know when to expect us,” Coty says. “If they don’t know when we might show up, it can be a big deterrent.”

The station in Elizabeth City has five Jayhawk helicopters and five Hercules planes. The Jayhawks can fly nearly 600 miles, about the distance from the station to Bermuda, before they have to stop and fill up. When flying such a long distance, staying on course is a must, according to Coty. One increment off on a calculation, and they could find themselves out of fuel and 60 miles off route.

Typically, Coast Guard personnel work in 24-hour shifts starting at 4 p.m., with two days off each week. Sometimes their shifts are uneventful and consist of routine law enforcement, but sometimes they are called out on a search-and-rescue for a missing or stranded boater or fisherman.

The calls tend to come in the middle of the night. Coty says it’s because families typically don’t worry if a loved one is slow to return during the day, but once the sun dies down, nervousness surfaces.
“When a loved one is overdue, that’s when people start to panic and call us,” Coty says.

When the call comes in, the guards jump into action. Guided by clues about the person’s last whereabouts, they search the water from the air.

When it’s dark, they rely heavily on a heat-sensing radar on the front of the helicopter. The radar can pick up heat signatures, or temperature differences, given off by bodies in the water.

“Once it gets daylight, your chances of being found go up dramatically,” Coty says. “But, if it’s at night, one of the best ways to be found is to have some sort of signaling device—anything with a strobe or a flare. True fishermen are usually good about having them, and it makes them much easier to find in an emergency after dark.”

Coty estimates only about one-third of their searches result in rescues. On average, they go on about 250 a year and rescue about 75 people. Coty hesitates to say they save lives because he claims it’s impossible to know whether the people would have survived on their own or not. It’s that modesty that makes Coast Guard servicemen and women who they are.

“The training we get with the Coast Guard is unlike Army or Navy training,” Coty says. “They train a lot, but mainly only use those skills in war times. We train, but we use the skills we learn every day.”