How to check for a helicopter incident?
 

I was driving in Renton, WA a couple of hours ago and I saw a helicopter, north of me, dropping vertically very, very quickly. It was a few miles away, and it went behind a building before I could see if it recovered.

It was falling with such speed that I can't imagine it was a normal descent. My thought was that it, hopefully, was doing an autorotation, and would slow before it landed, because if it continued down at that rate I was witnessing, it certainly looked like a crash in progress.

Anyway, nothing showing on the local news sites or *******, so hopefully what I saw was unusual but not a newsworthy incident.

Is there any kind of site that has close to real-time reporting of accidents/incidents that might report if there was an autorotation or crash? What I saw was really disturbing, and I'd feel a lot better knowing it wasn't a crash or injury situation.

faa posts daily accident reports.
Preliminary Accident & Incident Data

IF it was reported it would be there.

Some time later there will be a report on the NTSB site.

I think any accident that involves substantial damage or injury has to be reported .

Preliminary data can sometimes take days to show up...I would watch the evening news. As nothing is on any of the Seattle staions so far, I would guess it was just someone training.

Renton you say :E There are a couple of helicopter operators there.

Most likely a training flight, practising autorotations. A helicopter dropping through the sky at 1,000 ft per minute can look alarming.

Cheers

Whirls

Yep, guessing it was just training. Which is good to know! It was certainly descending at a speed I've never seen a helicopter come down at before. I was cursing myself for not just stopping the car to see it recover from the high-speed descent (I had a pretty clear view almost to the ground, but then buildings obscured it after I saw the first five seconds or so of the "fall").

Anyway, nothing in the news, so must have been training. Wow, autorotation training must be really exciting!

Autos are rarely much greater than 2500' fpm in any type even if you don't use best speed, but you can get a 205/212 (and many others) to as much as 5000' fpm if you do it right.

But why do this, you ask? A fire you can't put out, inside or outside. It looks pretty cool from the ground, too!

If you were driving a car, that could explain a lot. The apparent movement from a moving car can be very different from the real movement, and the descent rate and angle can appear to be much greater than actual.

"Most likely a training flight, practising autorotations. A helicopter dropping through the sky at 1,000 ft per minute can look alarming.
Cheers
Whirls"

1000 FPM. Wow, I wish my autos were that serene!:\ (It looks like 4000 FPM from inside, but the VSI says otherwise.)