The aircraft was lodged in the top of a 60-foot tree
John Gregory’s aircraft crashed into the top of a tree on April 22 east of McCall, Idaho. Photo by Valley County Sheriff’s Office.
You know what they say about any landing you can walk away from……
That is what 79-year old John Gregory of McCall, Idaho did after his Piper Cub PA-18 crashed on top of a 60-foot white fir tree east of McCall Monday night. He had to be extracted from the plane and lowered to the ground by firefighters, but after his feet were firmly on top of snow at the base of the tree, he walked away uninjured.
Mr. Gregory had taken off at Challis and was intending to land at the McCall Airport but the plane lost power.
There are a number of facts about this story that are interesting other than the obvious… the plane somewhat intact at the top of the tree. (A piece of a prop and one wheel fell to the ground.)
The Valley County Sheriff’s Office said authorities were notified three ways about the accident at around 8:42 p.m.:
A SPOT locater activation.
US Air Force Rescue Command received notice of an unregistered EPIRB activation.
Mr. Gregory called 911 on his cell phone, saying he had just crashed his plane and he was stuck in the trees in the air.
The Sheriff’s Office and McCall Fire and EMS responded into the snowy mountains on snowmobiles and a local resident brought Sno-Cat. Two helicopters were dispatched, one from Two Bear Air and an air ambulance from Boise, but it was feared that the rotor wash would dislodge the plane, so it was all on the shoulders of the ground-based personnel.
It was dark so they worked with flashlights and lights from the Sno-Cat.
When I first heard about this accident, a plane and a victim stuck in the top of a tree, I thought that since it was near the McCall Smokejumper Base, a jumper was going to climb the tree and rescue the pilot, since they are trained in tree climbing to retrieve parachutes.
But, one of the McCall volunteer firefighters, Randy Acker, is an arborist and owner of Acker Tree Service. He offered to scale the tree, the Idaho Statesman reported. I checked, and Mr. Acker is not a smokejumper.
Below is an excerpt from an article in the Idaho Statesman. And keep in mind — it was well after dark.
[McCall Fire Captain Brandon] Swain said seven people on the ground watched the tree carefully as Acker climbed it, cutting limbs with a chainsaw as he ascended. He stopped cutting about 20 feet from the top.
“We were nervous,” Swain said. “The majority of the limbs at the top were helping support that plane.”
There was no way to know how hard the plane hit the tree or whether the tree was seriously compromised. But the plane didn’t budge while Acker worked to get the pilot out, Swain said.
Acker secured the plane to the tree with rope webbing. He then got the pilot into a safety harness so he could be lowered to the ground. Jordan Ockunzzi and Swain helped Gregory down through a process called belaying.
The Sheriff’s Office is not releasing the exact location of the incident, and is asking the public to avoid the area since a gust of wind could cause the aircraft to crash, again, this time to the ground.
John Gregory’s aircraft crashed into the top of a tree on April 22 east of McCall, Idaho. Photo by Valley County Sheriff’s Office.
A helicopter is outfitted with a hopper to reseed areas burned in wildfires in Idaho. BLM photo.
After being delayed by the partial government shutdown the Bureau of Land Management has completed a large reseeding project in Idaho. The agency treated 52,000 acres of land that burned in wildfires during the last two years including portions of the 99,502-acre Grassy Ridge fire northwest of St. Anthony and other fires near Atomic City and Menan Buttes. Helicopters and fixed wing planes dispersed the seed.
Below is an excerpt from an article in the Idaho State Journal:
Experts on the subject say the best time to reseed is when there’s snow on the ground.
“If you have a sunny day when you’re applying, the seed will heat up and melt below the snow layer,” Ben Dyer, BLM fire ecologist, said. “You try to have it put down when a storm is predicted in the near future so you can cover it up with another layer of snow.”
If all goes well, the snow melts in spring and provides the seeds with wet soil to germinate and flourish. There is currently 6 to 8 inches of snow on most of the ground where the Grassy Ridge Fire occurred last summer, Dyer said. Dyer said the hope is that grass and sagebrush seed will establish itself before cheatgrass does and also help prevent soil erosion.
“We include a mixture of native grasses and forbs and we also have some introduced (seeds) that are a little more aggressive at choking out and competing against cheatgrass,” he said. “In the event that our native components don’t do well, at least we have that non-native component that has a little bit better chance.”
Above: Tanker 101, showing the added external tank, December 12, 2017 at Rapid City Airport. Photo by Bill Gabbert.
(Originally published at 8:38 p.m. MDT August 1, 2018; updated at 6:16 a.m. PDT August 2, 2018)
An engine malfunctioned on an airtanker operated by Erickson Aero Air on July 30 after taking off from the Coeur d’Alene Airport in Idaho. A person we talked with at the airport said they heard a very loud “boom” as the engine failed, and said the aircraft was an MD-87 airtanker. Mike Ferris, a PIO for the U.S. Forest Service, the agency that contracts for the large and very large airtankers used by the federal government, confirmed Wednesday evening that “an Erickson Aero Tanker MD-87 did have an engine upset shortly after takeoff from the Coeur d’Alene Airport on Monday at approximately 1430 PDT.” He said the aircraft landed safely after the incident.
The Coeur d’Alene Post Falls Press reported that unofficial sources told them that hot debris from an airtanker engine started multiple fires after pieces fell to the ground north of the airport. They also wrote that the runway was closed while “unspecified debris” was removed. The newspaper was not able to find any government officials who would comment about the cause of the fires, saying it was under investigation.
Kootenai County government reported on their facebook page that “several small fires resulted from an aircraft incident” at the airport.
(UPDATE at 6:16 a.m. PDT August 2, 2018: Late yesterday Jim Lyon, Deputy Fire Marshal/PIO with Northern Lakes Fire District, confirmed that a jet-powered airtanker under contract to the U.S. Forest Service, at approximately 2:30 p.m., “had mechanical problems on take-off and was able to make an immediate circle route to return to base safely. In so doing, it appears the plane was discharging some sort of material as a result of the mechanical problem, starting several fires throughout the area of approximately a five-mile radius of the airport.” Marshal Lyon said “up to eight fires” started by the incident were under control by the evening of July 30.)
Below is an excerpt from a July 31 article in the Spokesman-Review about the incident:
Jim Lyon with the Northern Lakes Fire District said crews battled about seven fires, but none grew to the size of a major wildfire. The first blazes started about 2 p.m. and spread from there.
Shoshana Cooper with the U.S. Forest Service in north Idaho said the fires burned to the northwest, south and east of the airport near U.S. Highway 95. She said they burned mostly grass and brush and were not affecting structures. As of 3:30 p.m., no structures had been lost.
Multiple aircraft were sent in to drop retardant on the blazes, but firefighters weren’t sure early Monday afternoon how large the fires had grown.
KXLY reported that a firefighter was injured while working on one of the fires near the airport:
A Kootenai County Fire and Rescue firefighter was injured Monday evening when he was struck by a vehicle that was backing up on Dodd Road by Strayhorn while responding to fires burning near the Coeur d’Alene Airport. He was evaluated at the scene. His injuries were not life threatening, but he was transported to Kootenai Health as a precaution.
The airport resumed normal operation at about 6:30 p.m. Monday.
We were not able to find a SAFECOM report about the incident, and very few people are willing to talk about it. Our calls to personnel at Erickson Aero Air late in the afternoon August 1 either were not returned right away or the employees we talked with said they were not able to comment.
This is not the first time that an engine on an Erickson Aero Tanker MD-87 has exploded with falling debris causing problems after hitting the ground. On September 13, 2015 debris from a failed engine landed in a residential area of Fresno, California. One chunk of metal crashed through the rear window of a car, while other shrapnel was found in city streets.
There has been concern about retardant ingested into the engines, when the MD-87 is making a drop, since at least 2014. A SAFECOM filed back then considered the possibility after engine surges or intermittent power was a problem for one aircraft after making a drop. Photos were taken of retardant stains on the fuselage caused by retardant flowing over the wing.
The first fix that Erickson Aero Air implemented was in 2014, “a new spade profile that has proved to eliminate this problem by keeping the fluid column much more vertical.”
Airtanker 101, showing the added external tank December 12, 2017 at Rapid City Airport. Photo by Bill Gabbert.
Then in June 2017 the company took a much more radical step. They had an external tank, or pod, fabricated and installed below the retardant tank doors, which lowered the release point by 46 inches, mitigating the problem, said Kevin McLoughlin, the Director of Air Tanker Operations.
On December 12, 2017 I was given a tour of Tanker 101 by the flight crew while it was in Rapid City, and I noticed there was evidence of retardant flowing over the top of the wing. If you check out the profile photo of Tanker 101 at the top of this article, you will see that the top of the wing is not much lower than the height of the engine intake.
Tanker 101, an MD-87, with evidence of retardant stains on top of the wing, December 12, 2017 at Rapid City Airport. Photo by Bill Gabbert.
Another unique characteristic of the MD-87 is that it is required by the FAA to lower the gear while dropping — in fact it is specified in their Supplemental Type Certificate (STC) issued by the FAA. That 10-page STC uses the words “stall” or “stalling” 60 times, an average of 10 times on every page.
Our view:
How many second chances should an airtanker design get after exploding engines on two occasions and dropping hot shrapnel over a city and at an airport? The FAA and the Interagency Airtanker Board should rescind the Supplemental Type Certificate and the IAB approval and carding of the airtanker before something much worse happens than a car being damaged while parked at a home, or shrapnel closes a runway, multiple wildfires are ignited, and a firefighter is injured putting out the blaze. I fear not only for the safety of the flight crews in the MD-87s, but also people on the ground who have every right to expect that firefighting airtankers on U.S. Forest Service contracts will not kill or injure them with exploding engines — and that an airtanker hired to suppress fires will not start them.
Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Tom. Typos or errors, report them HERE.
KIFI reported that all air operations were shut down on the Grassy Ridge Fire north of Idaho Falls, Idaho after a near midair collision between a drone and a helicopter on August 1.
Officials say the[helicopter] pilot was fortunate enough to have spotted the other aircraft just in time to take evasive action and narrowly avoid a midair collision.
A photo of a white pickup truck speeding away from the area of the near miss was taken by a flight crew member.
The Fremont County Sheriff’s Office was notified and Law Enforcement officers were dispatched to the area.
All aircraft in use for fighting the Grassy Ridge Fire were immediately grounded and will remain so, hampering the fire suppression and repair efforts, until it can be verified that the airspace within the TFR over the fire is safe to fly in again.
The 99,502-acre Grassy Ridge Fire has a fireline completely around it for days, but Incident Commander Taiga Rohrer is calling it 97 percent contained.
On or about July 29 fire officials posted this message on InciWeb:
Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Reid. Typos or errors, report them HERE.
On July 26 the pilot and the Air Tactical Group Supervisor had a close call in an exclusive use Aero Commander 690 while flying a fire in Idaho. Thanks to their close coordination and crew resource management they landed safely at the Rexburg, Idaho airport.
Below is part of the report that was filed:
On Thursday July 26th while flying on the Grassy Ridge Fire, Air Attack XXXX experienced an in-flight emergency requiring an immediate landing at Rexburg {RXE} Airport which was approximately 4 minutes flight time from the fire. The nature of the in-flight emergency was that the ATGS and Pilot started smelling the odor produced from burning wire.
The ATGS immediately turned off the AC unit, as it had a breaker trip 2 days earlier and first thought was that maybe that could be the problem. However within a minute the Door Indicator Light came on, the Pilot went to reset the switch and it immediately popped off again. Then the Pilots radio and intercom went out.
The decision was made to head to the nearest airport which was identified as Rexburg showing 4 minutes on the GPS. The GPS turned off and then came back on. The Pilot and ATGS went through the Electrical Emergency Procedures Check List and set up for a straight in landing on Runway 17 {RXE}. The ATGS notified Dispatch and the IC of the emergency situation in route to the airport. The ATGS due to the Pilots radio being out made the calls on 122.8 of the approach and landing.
Upon landing more things started to fail, the right “Gen Out“ light went on and a couple circuit breakers popped out. Once the plane landed the gear down warning started to sound. The aircraft was taxied to parking and the Pilot went through the shut down procedures, however the engines would not shut down. The ATGS held in the door activation switch and the pilot reset a couple of the breakers and the engines shut down.
The pilot and ATGS did a quick survey of the aircraft to insure there was no fire and no smoke was visible, just the strong odor of the burning wire. With all power turned off the aircraft was monitored while the Pilot and ATGS made calls to Dispatch and company owner and mechanic.
The Owner and Head of Maintenance arrived in Rexburg about 1830 and began to do an inspection. The initial finding was that the Pulse Light on the right wing tip had caused the control switch to “melt“. For some reason a breaker or fuse did not trip and it cause the wiring to start to melt. This caused other wires to also “fry“ which was the cause of the loss of the pilot radio and other items turning off and circuits to pop. The company is starting the process of going through the wiring trunk and repair the damage caused by the incident.
Above L. to R. — Dale Hamilton, Nick Hamilton, Casey Lewis, Aleesha Chavez — all of Northwest Nazarene University.
A group from Northwest Nazarene University is working on systems using artificial intelligence to analyze data collected by drones to map wildfires and determine fire effects.
We filmed this interview in a room where exhibits were being installed at the Fire Continuum Conference in Missoula, Montana the week of May 21, 2018.
Spectators in Missoula enjoyed seeing water drops and flyovers.
Above: Neptune’s Tanker 05, a P2V, makes a red, white, and blue water drop at Missoula, September 30, 2017. Photo by Terry Cook.
(Originally published at 5:30 p.m. MDT October 1, 2017)
Yesterday Neptune Aviation Services officially retired the last of their P2V air tankers in a ceremony at the Missoula airport. This year the company had four of the former submarine hunters on contract that were built between 1954 and 1957 — Tankers 05, 06, 14 and 44. In 2012 ten P2Vs were on contract with the U.S. Forest Service operated by Neptune and Minden.
Neptune planned a fairly elaborate program Saturday with prize drawings, several water drops, numerous food trucks, a water drop from successive tanks with red, white, and blue water, and a formation flyover of their last four P2Vs on contract.
Neptune has been operating the P2V air tankers for 24 years. Many pilots and warbird fans enjoy flying, seeing, or hearing the aircraft and the throaty roar of its two 18-cylinder radial engines. When extra power is needed during takeoff or after a 2,000-gallon drop to climb out of a canyon it can enlist the help of two small jet engines farther out on the wings.
Greg Jones, Program Manager for Neptune Aviation, said the tankers will be taken to museums across America.
The planes are going to be stored short term in Alma Gorda, New Mexico. We will ferry them down the next couple weeks and then they will be dispersed throughout museums across the United States.
In 2009, working with Tronos, Neptune began converting jet airliners, BAe-146-200s, into air tankers, adding a 3,000-gallon retardant tank. In 2017 they had seven of them on exclusive use contract.
BAe-146-200 makes its first drop October 28, 2009 over Prince Edward island in Canada. Tronos photo.
To our knowledge the jets have not suffered any catastrophic failures or major incidents since they began dropping on wildfires. In the first half of this decade P2Vs were involved in a number of troublesome landings and in one case a crash while dropping on the White Rock Fire near the Utah/Nevada state line, killing all three crewmembers. Two P2Vs operated by Minden encountered landing gear failures, and those aircraft have not been seen over a fire since the incidents. Other fatal crashes occurred in 2008 and 2009.
Tanker 41, a BAe-146, lands at Redding August 7, 2014 after dropping on a fire in northwest California.
On April 21, 2017 we interviewed Zach Havel an engine mechanic and former Crew Chief on C-130 Modular Airborne FireFighting System aircraft. The MAFFS converts the aircraft into a 3,000-gallon air tanker. We talked with him at Boise during the annual MAFFS training and recertification.
