In extreme contexts, actors must often engage in collective sensemaking to enablecoordinated action. While prior research has established that cognitive disparities and emotivedistractions disrupt collective sensemaking, we lack theory on how actors overcome these com-mon challenges in extreme contexts. To address this shortcoming, we conducted a process study,collecting unique multi-perspective video and archival data during a maritime search and rescuemission in the Aegean Sea where actors (i.e., rescue crew members and refugees) faced cognitivedisparities (e.g., different levels of maritime expertise) and distracting emotions (e.g., fear, anxiety,and tension) yet needed to coordinate their actions to ensure a safe evacuation. We draw on thisdata to develop a collective sensemaking model that details the auxiliary process steps and mul-timodal communication – verbal, para-verbal, and non-verbal cues – actors use to alternatelyframe emotional states and convey task-related information. Our model demonstrates howactors, through multimodal collective sensemaking, overcome the challenges posed by cognitivedisparities and distracting emotions in extreme contexts. It thus adds a dynamic emotive andbodily perspective to the predominantly cognitive and verbal understanding in sensemakingtheory, and also has implications for practitioners working in extreme contexts.