Sorry to hear about a tragedy for the birthday girl - thoughts are with her family.
I know it's too early to speculate about the cause of the accident, but from eye witness accounts it seems that the chopper started spinning as soon as she started to take off. Mechanical problems aside, my question is where was the wind coming from ? It's very hard to extract power and keep her stable in the hover near MTOW when the wind is swirling around the pier and could be coming from any direction or elevation. And did the pilot attempt transition or was it a max power takeoff ? It's awfully difficult to transition off a pier without ground effect and without sufficient airspeed the risk of low rrpm and LTE is high. I note however there is no coning of the remaining MR blade, according to the press pics.
Reminds me of two previous accidents - spot the similarities:
http://www.pprune.org/rotorheads/178...nto-river.html
http://www.pprune.org/rotorheads/179...-new-york.html