Announcement. Fred Rakunas is all right.

For all the neighbors who saw the little red seaplane take off from Fred’s shoreline, only to land at the north end of Torch Lake where a host of rescue vehicles were gathered: Fred Rakunas is fine.  Fred, in fact, is better than fine.  He was piloting that plane, and he landed it just off the DNR boat launch by prior arrangement.  At EMS Director Kip Ditlow’s request, Fred taught a whole class of Torch Lake Township EMS and Fire Department rescue workers how to deal with a small plane accident or emergency landing should one occur on Torch Lake or Grand Traverse Bay, which is not as unlikely as you might think. 

That is Fred in the center, in the white shirt and red shorts, explaining useful things like how to extricate people without hurting them or accidentally starting up the plane.  Just so you know, Fred is significantly overqualified for this duty.  The former Vice Chair of the Michigan Aeronautics Commission accumulated over 30,000 hours of flight time in a career that spanned service as a U.S. Army aircraft mechanic and flight instructor, and as a senior airline captain.  He’s OK to fly the little red seaplane – plus helicopters, the McDonnell-Douglas DC-9 and DC-10, and the Boeing 727 and 747.   He retired from all that, though, and now he’s a consultant to aeronautics programs at colleges and universities and a member of the Go Team–about which more in another post soon, I promise. 

There were a number of exercises during the class, including how to tow a plane to shore.  There are more hazards than you might think.  Consider the likely presence of fuel, the possibility of drowning before you can die of your injuries, the dire warnings painted on the pontoons. 

On the bright side, apparently it’s easier to tear a plane apart with the Jaws of Life than it is a car.  That was oddly reassuring.  More later.