I had a good chat with a Romeo Instructor Pilot from NASNI a few months back, and was pretty surprised at their OGE hover numbers for sea level on a warm day... I believe he said that at their average mission GW, they were steady in the triple digits for torque on a slightly balmy day over the ocean while dipping sonar (OGE). Not hard to see how doing the same thing up in the mountains might not be wise given the less than stellar altitude performance of the T700 when powering a H-60. The gent I spoke with was talking about how they were purposely trying to get higher performing engines out of maintenance so they had extra power (greater than 1.0 ETF) because the margins were just that close. Those things are pretty damn heavy.
Something else that I am curious about... I believe all the Seahawk family have a "Contingency Power" switch which re-references the TGT limiters on both engines' ECU/DECs to the OEI rating, while AEO. Curious if the pilots at hand were planning on it being on, when it was actually not. Get into an OGE hover, start falling through, find the button (which I believe is on their collective head) right as you hit the water possibly? Would explain the (relatively) spirited fly away. We have the option on our 'Hawks, and just about nobody turns the thing off. It's just always there just in case, so if it wasn't one time by chance, it could be a surprise and let you get into a situation like that in the video.
Yet another testament to the ole Hawk though, those things can take a beating. Pretty amazing to watch them fly away from that one.
Mike