Oregon pilot killed in crash

[Time Out]

KATU News:

SWISSHOME - Lane County Sheriff's officials confirm that two people have died in a helicopter that went down in Swisshome today after clipping a power line.
"Initially it looks like they struck some kind of a wire, and caused the aircraft to crash into the water. Fire members were able to access the helicopter and have confirmed that two people have died," said a Lane County sheriff.

http://www.katu.com/news/images/story2003/031014crash_map.jpg

A spokeswoman for the Lane County Sheriff's Department says 57-year-old Richard Black was the pilot. Both he and his one passenger, 53-year-old David Mackey, of Veneta, died.

Black worked for Weyerhauser. Mackey as an observer for the Oregon Department of Forestry.

Witnesses say the air was hazy over the river in the morning.

The sheriff's spokeswoman, Melinda Kletzok, says both men had been conducting a survey of a previous forest fire site.

Source (http://www.katu.com/news/story.asp?ID=61546) with picture

and

KVAL news:


Northeast of Mapleton -
A helicopter crash in western Lane County killed both the pilot and a passenger. Witnesses say it was foggy and the helicopter was flying low when the accident happened late Tuesday morning.

Dick Black of Eugene and Craig Mackey of Veneta were on a routine survey charter flight for the Oregon Department of Forestry. Witnesses say the helicopter clipped a power line and began fishtailing before the crashed into the river.

"He was coming all the way down the valley. I was watching him, because you know I was fascinated with him and I was watching him and I thought to my self he was awful low. I didn't know what he was doing. Very sad, yes. I didn't want to be watching," said Karen Redhead, who witnessed the crash.

The accident is the first fatal crash of a Weyerhaeuser helicopter. The company was providing the charter service for the Department of Forestry.

Lane County Sheriff's officials say once emergency crews found no one had survived they secured the scene for Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board investigators.

"We want to preserve that scene as much as possible for them so that they can make accurate inquiries and investigation into the cause of the accident, so we don't want to disturb the scene that much," said Sgt. Byron Trapp with the Lane County Sheriff's Office.

Weyerhaeuser has operated helicopters since 1946 and currently has 14 in use in the U.S. and Canada. Investigators from the FAA and NTSB are on their way to the scene to complete the investigation.

The pilot was Dick Black, who worked out of the aviation office at the Eugene airport and had been a Weyerhaeuser employee for 19-years.

Craig Mackey was the only passenger in the helicopter. He was an assistant supervisor for the Oregon Department of Forestry. He had worked there for 29 years.

source (http://www2.kval.com/x30530.xml?ParentPageID=x2649&ContentID=x42553&Layout=kval.xsl&AdGroupID=x30530)

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Lane County in Western Oregon spans from the Oregon Coast, through the Willamette Valley to the McKenzie and Willamette Rivers up to the peaks of the central Cascade Mountains.
http://www.co.lane.or.us/images/homepage/sidebar/CountyMap.jpg

[Heliport]

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.

[Bronx]

Firehouse.Com News

Two Killed In Oregon Helicopter Crash Classified As LODD

Two firefighters who were killed in a helicopter crash October 14 while scouting for dipping pools for wildland firefighting, have been classified by the U.S. Fire Administration as line of duty deaths.

Forest Protection Supervisor David "Craig" Mackey and pilot Richard Warren Black of Weyerhaeuser Corporation were surveying the Siuslaw River for potential dip sites that could be used by water bucket-carrying helicopters for fighting fire.

Weyerhaeuser spokesman Frank Mendizabal said the helicopter was flying low when it came upon unmarked power lines. It appears the rotor got entangled, and the helicopter crashed into the Siuslaw River below, in west central Oregon.

Oregon Department of Forestry spokesman Rod Nichols said the cause of the accident is officially still under investigation by the NTSB and FAA.

Richard Warren Black, 57, had been a pilot for Weyerhaeuser Corporation since 1984, doing forestry related work such as firefighting, scouting and fertilizing, Mendizabal said.

He was a Vietnam veteran, had over 15,000 hours of flight time and was a certified flight instructor. He is survived by his wife and two sons.

Black was also an avid outdoorsman, bicyclist and a cancer survivor, and his family asked that any donations in his memory be made to the Lance Armstrong Cancer Research Fund.

Mendizabal said fellow pilots described him as a rock. "He was a guy anybody could go to about anything, any time," he said. "His reputation was a guy who never had a bad thing to say about anybody."

Mendizabal said Black and Mackey had worked and fought fires together many times.

"The fact that we not only had a helicopter crash, but we lost two very, very good people, was really tough," he said.

[Time Out]

The following comes from an article (http://www.theworldlink.com/articles/2004/02/28/news/news04.txt) on theworldlink.com

By Howard Yune, Staff Writer

The National Transportation Safety Board has released a six-page report about an Oct. 14 helicopter crash that killed both the pilot and passenger near Swisshome. World File Photo

Federal investigators have released a fact report about the Oct. 14 helicopter crash east of Florence that killed a state forestry official and a pilot employed by Weyerhaeuser Company.

The six-page report by the National Transportation Safety Board is based on an investigation led by Debra Eckrote of the agency's Seattle office. It outlines the circumstances of the accident, in which a Bell Longranger 206B struck an overhead power line near Swisshome, 21 miles east of Florence, and fell more than 200 feet into the Siuslaw River.

The pilot, 57-year-old Richard Warren Black of Eugene, and his passenger, 53-year-old David Craig Mackey of Veneta, died at the scene.

Mackey, an assistant forest unit supervisor for the Oregon Department of Forestry's Western Lane District, was directing Black toward the possible sites of water holes where helicopters could dip water while fighting forest fires in the district, the report said.

He had been assigned to mark the water holes with global positioning system points to guide future pilots to the dip sites.

According to the NTSB account, the helicopter left Eugene Airport shortly before 9:50 a.m. and was scheduled to pass over Triangle Lake and Lake Creek. The aircraft was then to follow the Siuslaw toward Mapleton, continue south to the Smith River and return to Eugene at about 1 p.m.

Although one of two witnesses to the helicopter crash reported "foggy and cloudy" weather in the general area of the crash, visual weather conditions prevailed, the NTSB added.

Shortly after 10:40 a.m., less than an hour after takeoff, the helicopter's rotor became entangled in the non-electrified neutral wire, the lowest of four cables spanning the river.

A second witness said immediately after the rotor struck the 5/8-inch-thick copper-and-steel line, the engine stalled and the craft fishtailed before plunging into 3 feet of water.

The 48-year-old electric wires, which are owned by the Central Lincoln People's Utility District, were not marked with rubber spheres to alert pilots, according to investigators.

Three people survived a helicopter collision 30 years ago with the same utility line, the Safety Board said. In that mishap, the pilot flying a Bell 47 on a mission for the U.S. Department of Agriculture did not see the neutral wire until too late, recalling afterward "the lines blended in with the dark background of the ridge."

Afterward, the USDA's accident report stated, under an entry listing steps to prevent future crashes, "Flight hazard map is being prepared will be posted and updated with copies available in pre-attack plan and with fire control officer." However, power lines and similar obstructions usually must be marked only within 3 nautical miles of an airport inside aviation corridors, said Eckrote, the lead investigator: stricter terms than existed in 1974, she added.

"In that era, those codes were not in effect, so it would be (a matter of) showing every single wire that crosses the countryside, which is impossible," she said on Thursday. "It would just be local knowledge."

According to the report, the ODF's aviation manual calls for a map of flight hazards, including power lines and towers, to be "maintained and kept at the respective offices or dispatch center" and to be updated at least once a year. Western Lane District staff members reported no flight hazard maps have been found either in the district office or dispatch center, investigators said.

The NTSB will publish a final report listing the probable cause of the accident in about two weeks, according to Eckrote.

Facts Report (http://www.ntsb.gov./ntsb/brief2.asp?ev_id=20031017X01771&ntsbno=SEA04LA005&akey=1)