Search On for 9 Victims in Wildfire Chopper Crash
SAN FRANCISCO — Fire raging through rugged, dense terrain complicated efforts yesterday to recover victims and evidence from a remote forested area in Northern California where a firefighting helicopter crashed. Nine people were presumed dead, but four others were rescued.
The aircraft was carrying 11 firefighters and two pilots when it went down and was destroyed by fire Tuesday night in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, according to the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board. The crash occurred just after the helicopter had picked up firefighters and lifted off from a small clearing to take them back to camp, officials said.
Four injured people — three firefighters and a pilot — were flown to hospitals. They were rescued from the burning wreckage by firefighters on the ground who had been waiting for another helicopter to pick them up, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Forest Service, Jennifer Rabuck, said.
Authorities can say with "fair certainty" that all nine — seven firefighters, a U.S. Forest Service employee, and a pilot — died, Undersheriff Eric Palmer of Trinity County said.
The wreckage of the Sikorsky S-61N helicopter was still smoldering yesterday morning, according to Carson Helicopters Inc., which owned and operated the chopper.
The site can be reached only by aircraft or an eight-hour hike, Sheriff Lorrac Craig, who was leading the recovery effort, said. Sheriff's officials had not yet pulled any bodies from the wreckage but were securing the site yesterday for NTSB investigators, who were en route.
Ten of the firefighters, including the three in the hospital, were employed by firefighting contractor Grayback Forestry, according to a spokeswoman for the Merlin, Ore.-based company, Kelli Matthews.
The firefighters killed were identified by Grayback as Shawn Blazer, 30; Scott Charleson, 25; Matthew Hammer, 23; Edrik Gomez, 19; Bryan Rich, 29; and David Steele, 19. All were from southern Oregon. Grayback said it would not release the name of a seventh killed firefighter until it could notify relatives.
