A Cal Fire observation helicopter crashed east of Los Angeles on Sunday evening after a midair collision with another firefighting helicopter, killing three crew members aboard. The Bell 407 collided with a Sikorsky S-64E, which was also working the fire, and the crash killed the two Cal Fire employees and their contract pilot on board the Bell. The Siller heavy helicopter experienced a hard landing but its crew of two parked the aircraft and walked away.
Those lost in the crash were a Cal Fire division chief, a Cal Fire captain, and a contract pilot. The Press-Enterprise reported that Cal Fire Southern Region Chief David Fulcher and other fire personnel at a midnight news conference wore black tape over their badges.
UPDATE: CALFIRE says Assistant Chief Josh Bischof and Fire Captain Tim Rodriguez were killed in the crash, along with the Bell helicopter contract pilot Tony Sousa.
After the crash, emergency personnel were dispatched to the site near the unincorporated community of Cabazon around 7:20 p.m., according to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department. The crash occurred south of the 10 Freeway east of Banning, California, on tribal land south of the Morongo Casino.
A CBS News report said the Bell 407 (a derivative of a LongRanger) was flying in an observer-coordinator role when it collided with the Sikorsky Skycrane while battling the brush fire. Fixed-wing aircraft were also fighting the fire, with a total of six aircraft on the fire Sunday evening an hour or two before sunset. “This area has a lot of the light, flashy fuels that are becoming very prevalent with this fire season,” said Cal Fire Public Information Officer Rob Roseen. “Where we have a lot of these annual grasses and brush, they’re getting five, six feet tall.”
The fire, which reportedly started in a structure about 6 p.m., had spread to nearby brush, Cal Fire Southern Region Chief David Fulcher in a news conference, and had grown to about 20 acres. He said that Riverside County Fire Chief Bill Weiser had met with two family members. “We just want to let them know that we are there for them,” he added.
Cal Fire and Riverside County Fire crews were working on the fire near Broadway and Esperanza avenues; skies were mostly clear early Sunday evening, with winds ranging from 9 to 14 mph and gusts of 17 to 25 mph.
Our heartfelt condolences to families and friends of those lost, and also to the crew aboard the Sikorsky.
If my rant is inappropriate, please forgive me. There are so many rules in place, especially in the basin, to prevent this type of accident that it seems almost inexcusable to me that it happened. To try to implicate the lack of TCAS or blame an agency for not having TCAS as a cause of the crash is grandstandingly ridiculous.
I totally disagree on the TCAS comment. You have at least 4 radios up and then this useless piece of equipment constantly alerts “Traffic, Traffic” because you are in a FTA and there is traffic everywhere! You fly with your thumb on the mute button because it drives you to distraction from the important radio calls. It is clear that Juan has not actually flown single pilot Helitac in the LA Basin.
Figure out why the 407 was not in the designated C&C FTA approach altitude and it will go a long way to explain how two aircraft, in wide open airspace, on a non critical trailer fire call could have hit each other.
It makes me sick for the families and especially the Crane crew.
I agree. Non-helicopter pilots think TCAS is the end-all-be-all savior against mid-airs, either because it works great for airplanes, or because it sounds so perfect on paper. That is NOT the case for helicopters in the SoCal firefighting environment, especially during initial attack and nearly within the traffic pattern of an airport. In such situations the constant TCAS alarms are a distracting nuisance and hinder situational awareness. I don’t know how this happened. There may have been confusion on frequencies (not uncommon in SoCal with multiple jurisdictions crammed together) or some other failure to communicate each other’s position/altitude. Task saturation, target fixation, and/or blind spots may have led to inadequate scanning for traffic. But having Juan try to slap someone’s wrist over YouTube for not having TCAS is ignorant and unhelpful. We’ll learn lessons from this, but spare us the high-horse self-righteousness at times like this. Prayers for the families and communities around both crews.
Having been the I.C. On the “Bus” fire incident in 2001, where two of my air tankers had a midair collision causing the deaths of both pilots , my heart goes out to the families and friends of these three Gentlemen. My prayers are with you !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aftbRvjmwB4
Blancolirio (Juan) has excellent ADIS graphs and provides a detailed report. A second Blancolirio video on the tube talks about how the lack of TCAS on the 407 played it’s role.
I appreciate the fact the people in the Sikorsky were included in ‘heartfelt condolences’, for one is my brother.
he is absolutely devastated in the loss of Tony, Tim & Josh. his heart bleeds at the thought of how much grief their loved ones have gone & will go through. all of us will continue our prayers and support for all involved, and will do what EVER it takes to make sure nothing like this is able to happen again.
Heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of those lost and to the pilot/firefighters on the other ship and all Cal Fire.
Florida Forest Service – Aviation
Rest easy brothers. I hope we can learn and grow based on their sacrifice when the facts come out. I’m sure those of us in the aviation community that are in the know of how things work with fire air traffic are raising eyebrows but let’s give time for the actual story to be told.