Oregon Worldlink.com report (excerpt)
Debra Eckrote, senior air safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board in Seattle, said this morning the remains of the Bell 206 Longranger, removed near sunset Tuesday from the Siuslaw River, were taken to a hangar at Eugene Airport. There, the agency will spend several weeks pursuing the cause of the Tuesday-morning crash that killed pilot Dick Black, 57, and his passenger Craig Mackey, 53, assistant forest unit supervisor for the Oregon Department of Forestry's West Lane District.
Black and Mackey were on a scouting flight to find water holes to be used in fighting forest fires. The crash occurred about a half-hour after takeoff from Eugene, Eckrote said.
Meanwhile, at least three witnesses to the crash, including two workers at a nearby American Laminators mill, reported the helicopter flying unusually low before it struck an overhead power line spanning the Siuslaw, Eckrote said. The helicopter's rotor clipped the non-electrified neutral wire, the lowest of four cables, between 250 and 300 feet above the river's surface.
Two investigators from the Federal Aviation Administration's Springfield office, under the NTSB's direction, conducted the on-scene probe before the debris was moved to Eugene, according to Eckrote.
Though most of the fuselage was recovered, the rotor was almost completely destroyed.
"They found very little of the rotor," she said. "The wire hit on the main rotor blade or in the mast area. The fragments could have gone several hundred feet away or they could be in the water and not recovered." The craft went down in about 4 feet of water.
The NTSB has filed a request with Weyerhaeuser, the owner of the helicopter, to supply records on its maintenance and the pilot's flight history, Eckrote said. Black, a Eugene resident, had flown for the timber company for 19 years.