The following
SafeCom demonstrates precisley how anything can happen! If you ever meet the pilot that this occured to and hear his account of this (after a few beers) it is an eye opener. The report is very typically dry and factual, the actual sequence of events was incredible!
Incidentally the distraction that caught his eye, was a lead plane that continued a descent through heavy smoke after the tanker aborted the drop due to a total lack of visibility!
" The pilot was decending toward the surface of a lake for another bucket fill. While on short final transitioning to vertical reference, something caught the pilot's attention in side the cockpit. At about this same time, with approximately 15 knots of forward ground speed, he felt an abrupt tug on the aircraft. He immediately went to vertical reference to see the bucket full of water in the lake back behind the aircraft. He lowered the collective and applied aft cyclic to level the aircraft. The helicopter began an uncommanded left turn. He attempted to stop the turn by applying right pedal pressure, but the tail rotor pedals were jammed with about 1/2 left pedal. He applied power to stop the turn, released the 50 foot longline and bucket with the electrical release, and attempted to fly the helicopter and regain controlled flight. He recieved a radio call from helicopter 99R saying that he had "smoke" comming from the bottom of his aircraft. He looked into the outside mirror and saw fuel pouring out of the area around the cargo hook. He lowered the collective to attempt an emergency landing in a yard below, but he began to turn left again. He reapplied collective pitch to stop the turn and headed for Flagler County Airport which was about 1 mile to the east. He called the helibase at the airport and told them that he was inbound with and inflight emergency. The helibase manager called back and said crash rescue had been notified and was ready. The pilot elected to make an approach to a closed runway so he would not "tie up" the active runway. As he started his approach to land, the helicopter again tried to turn left. He aborted the approach and made a go-around. He then set up a steeper than normal approach and began rolling the throttles back. He terminated the approach to a hover and set the aircraft down in a level attitude. He then shut down the engines, turned off the electrical and exited the aircraft without futher incident. "