Search and Rescue

For more than five days the search has been on for missing Kenyan Wildlife Services helicopter pilot Major Solomon Nyanjui. As reported by the state-run Kenya Broadcasting Corporation, Nyanjui and the Kenya Power and Lighting Company-owned helicopter he was flying went missing within an hour after dropping off the country's Youth Affairs Minister Mohammed Kuti in the town of Isiolo. The helicopter is believed to have gone down in the dense jungle area surrounding Mount Kenya, which along with poor weather has made search and recovery efforts difficult.

On the near-opposite end of the earth, more foul weather, this time in the form of a rare williwaw windstorm, capsized Alaskan fisherman Alan Ryden's 42-foot boat on Friday. The sudden burst of cold hurricane-force wind left Ryden with just enough time to climb into his survival suit and radio a mayday distress call before his submerging boat sunk below what were believed to have been 16-foot swells. As reported by the Anchorage Daily News, Ryden was fishing alone roughly a mile off the Alaska Peninsula shore, 70 miles southwest of Kodiak Island. And in a case of multiple safety malfunctions, neither Ryden's mayday radio call nor the boat's automatically deployed Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon signal were received by the United States Coast Guard until Ryden had been in the water for six hours. It was another four hours before the 20-year commercial fishing veteran was pulled from the frigid waters; in all, he had drifted 14 miles away from shore.

While search efforts are still underway in Kenya, the work of rescuers like the Coast Guard, Ryden's  own determination to live, and other Outside survival stories provide hope for the safety of Major Nyanjui.
--Jason Kerkmans