A nine-year corpsman on Feb. 20 received the highest non-combat heroism medal awarded for non-combat valor for his role in saving four lives after a deadlymassive mudslide in Oso, Washington.
The Navy and Marine Corps Medal was presented to Hospital Corpsman 2nd Class (NAC) Brent McIntyre by Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Connecticut. McIntyre is now a student at the Naval Undersea Medical Institute's Submarine Independent Duty Corpsman class, which is based at Naval Submarine Base New London in Groton, Conn. But On March 22, 2014, McIntyre was a search and rescue technician who was part of an eight-man Navy team from Naval Air Station Whidbey Island that rescued a total of seven people, difficult work as rescuers tried to find and free victims trapped in an avalanche of mud.
"Pulling them out was difficult. I had not been involved in that level of extrication," McIntyre said in an exclusive interview with Navy Times. People were covered from the debris of their houses, mud, trees, and just about everything else imaginable.
McIntyre wasn't the only hero that day. Washington Gov.ernor Jay Inslee on Feb. 11 recognized McIntyre's teammates:
- Lt. Cmdr. David Warner, Lt. Robert Rerin, and former Naval Aircrewmen 2nd Class David Scott were awarded the Air Medal (individual action).
- Chief Naval Aircrewmen Richard Andraschko was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal.
- Firefighter/ Emergency Medical Technician Michael Wenzel, Ian Walton, and Kevin Paggao were awarded the Navy Fire & Emergency Life Saving Award.
A mountain saturated by two months of rain gave way that Saturday morning a year ago. County officials later estimated that 15 million cubic yards of earth — enough to fill three million dump trucks — swept down the mountainside and engulfed aroughlyone square mile in mere seconds. It buried more than four dozen structures; debris was 70 feet deep in some locations. The mudslide claimed 43 lives.
The Navy shared in that loss. Cmdr. John Regelbrugge, 49, and his wife, Kris, were killed in the mudslide. Chief Billy Spillers, 30, also was among the dead. He was a career counselor assigned to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility Detachment in Everett, Washington. He was watching TV with daughters Kaylee, 5, and Brooke, 2, and stepson Jovon Mangual, 13, who also were killed. Spillers' son Jacob, 4, was rescued.
The initial call was for an avalanche with three people involved, McIntyre recalled told Navy Times in a Feb. 27 phone interview.
"Our expectations when leaving for the call were vastly different than the reality of what we got to," the 32-year-old corpsman said. "We prepared for an avalanche, so I put on a lot of cold-weather gear. When we got there, it was overwhelming what we saw. An entire mountain slid into the valley and devastated everything."
As the MH-60S Sea Hawk arrived, the team noticed a man on a rooftop waving. When McIntyre and Andraschko went down to investigate, the man pointed them in the direction of the first two people they would save that day. After rescuing them, s this rescue concluded, another resident made his way to the team to alerted the team toof two people buried nearly 200 yards away.
The sailors used chain saws, axes, shovels — anything they could find — to dig out the victims. Sometimes, they were on their knees digging with their hands. The victims ranged from middle-aged to elderly, male and female. McIntyre provided and prioritized medical needs for multiple survivors until rescue aircraft arrived.
"They were still trying to grasp the reality of what had happened," McIntyre said. "Nobody had a clue what had happened. They were stupefied."
The Navy team spent five and one-half hours in the disaster zone. Though the sailors carefully navigated the disaster area, none gave much thought to the dangers around them, McIntyre said. It wasn't until the team compiled its after-action reports that they realized just how dangerous an environment it was. At times, they pushed through chest-deep mud that fought their every step. Sinkholes threatened to swallow them; downed power lines, jagged metal, and natural gas leaks lurked around every corner.
Still, Yet McIntyre "demonstrated unwavering determination in the face of vast personal danger," according to his award citation.
In fact, the day's mission was the easy part for McIntyre. Being awarded the prestigious medal is overwhelming, said the independent corpsman, who's now a student at the Naval Undersea Medical Institute in Groton, Connecticut.
"I don't like the limelight being on me," he said. "I'm not a big fan of attention. I was just on duty and doing what I was trained to do. I know that all the corpsmen I work with now and have worked with in the past would have done the same thing."
