6 Missing In Rescue Copter Crash

A Coast Guard rescue helicopter ferrying crew members from a stranded freighter crashed in the Bering Sea, leaving six people missing in the rough and frigid waters. The ship they left behind ran aground and split apart.

As rescuers searched for the six Thursday, the Coast Guard was responding to a possible fuel spill near a sensitive wildlife habitat.

The other four on the helicopter — three Coast Guard personnel and one crew member — were picked up by another helicopter participating in the rescue, the Coast Guard said. They were taken to Dutch Harbor on nearby Unalaska Island for medical treatment. There was no immediate word of their condition.

The freighter is owned by Singapore-based IMC Group and is registered under a Malaysian flag. Its crew was Filipino and Indian, the Coast Guard said.

Two other people who had stayed behind on the ship were rescued separately, as were 18 other crew members taken off the ship earlier.

The Coast Guard had been struggling to help the 738-foot freighter, the Selendang Ayu, since Tuesday when it began drifting after its main engine broke down. But 30-foot swells and 40-knot winds hampered their effort.

Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Roger Wetherell said the search was continuing early Thursday for the six missing, who may be wearing life jackets. The water temperature was about 43 degrees Fahrenheit and the waves were as high as 20 feet.

"The weather conditions are just horrible and they are deteriorating every moment," Wetherell told CBSNews. "Blowing spray, frozen spray, snow and rain, and very low visibility."

After daybreak a plane and two helicopters will be dispatched to join the search, Wetherell said.

"The survival time is right around three hours in those conditions," Rear Adm. James Olson, commander of the Coast Guard in Alaska, said earlier. "We'll search as long as we can be effective throughout the night."

Olson said he did not know whether the crew members were wearing survival gear. The cause of the crash was not immediately known.

Unalaska Island, in the Aleutian chain about 800 miles southwest of Anchorage, is home to sensitive wildlife habitat and fisheries.

The carrier's 440,000 gallons of heavy bunker oil had been transferred to inboard tanks and the fuel heaters were turned off to thicken the fuel, so in the event of a spill it would not disperse, Petty Officer Thomas McKenzie said.

The amount of spillage, if any, was not known Wednesday night, Olson said. The Coast Guard was transporting an oil containment boom to Dutch Harbor.

A tug boat had attached a line to the freighter on Tuesday evening, securing it for 12 hours. But then the line broke and the vessel resumed its path to the Unalaska Island shore.

The crew of the Selendang Ayu dropped anchor when it reached shallow water, but it was lost in the rough seas after just a half hour. The crew later dropped its other anchor, which for a while held the freighter from shore, Olson said.

The freighter's main engine broke down for unknown reasons on Tuesday. The freighter was carrying grain on a trans-Pacific voyage reportedly for Japan.

The Selendang Ayu is a single-deck bulk carrier built in China in 1998. It is owned by IMC Transworld, a subsidiary of IMC Group.

Company representatives are in Dutch Harbor and have met with Coast Guard officials, Olson said.