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Black Hawk Helicopter With 11 Aboard Crashes Off Florida Coast

Black Hawk Helicopter With 11 Aboard Crashes Off Florida Coast

By David Zucchino and W.J. Hennigan, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

JACKSONVILLE, N.C. — Human remains have washed ashore along the Florida coastline after a U.S. military Black Hawk helicopter vanished during a routine training mission Tuesday night with seven Marines and four Army soldiers on board, the military said.

Local law enforcement, the Coast Guard and military members from Eglin Air Force base outside Pensacola, where the helicopter’s flight originated, have been searching for debris since the helicopter was reported missing, said Sara Vidoni, an Air Force spokeswoman at the base.

“Fog impeded the search mission this morning, but it is beginning to dissipate,” she said, adding that the search efforts had been limited to boats and teams walking the shore because of the fog.

The Marines were from the Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command, known as MARSOC, said Capt. Barry Morris, a MARSOC spokesman at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. The soldiers were from a Hammond, La.-based National Guard unit, The Associated Press reported.

The helicopter, an Army National Guard UH-60 Black Hawk, went missing over the Gulf of Mexico about 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, officials said. Search and rescue crews found debris around 2 a.m. Wednesday, said Andy Bourland, spokesman for the Air Force base.

If the Marines are confirmed dead, the Marine Corps will not release their names until 24 hours after their next of kin are notified, Morris said.

“Our focus now is on the search,” Morris said. “Our thoughts and prayers are with their families.”

Bourland said the helicopter took off from a nearby airport in Destin and joined other military aircraft in the training exercise.

Much of the area was enveloped in fog from Tuesday evening to Wednesday morning, Katie Moore with the National Weather Service in Tallahassee told the AP. Much of that time, visibility was at two miles or less, she said.

Vehicles from local law enforcement agencies were gathered Wednesday morning at the crash scene near a remote swath of beach between Pensacola and Destin. The beach is owned by the military and is used for test missions.

Word of the helicopter crash had already reached the Tight Cuts barber shop on the busy highway next to Camp Lejeune’s main gate, where owner Napoleon Kinsey was at work early Wednesday afternoon.

“Every time young Marines get killed, it really touches me,” said Kinsey, 48, who served four years in the Marine Corps before opening his shop 15 years ago. “I feel so bad. I always do.”

Some of Kinsey’s regular customers are MARSOC Marines, and he said he hoped none of them had been on the doomed helicopter. He cut a MARSOC gunnery sergeant’s hair just the day before, he said.

Kinsey’s customer, Roy Dickenson, said news of the accident touched him deeply. Dickenson said his son is a Marine master sergeant stationed at Camp Lejeune — and a steady Tight Cuts customer the last 15 years.

Dickenson said he identified with the missing Marines, who were on a training mission, because his son was on a training exercise near Camp Lejeune on Wednesday morning.

“It’s really so sad,” said Dickenson, 67, a retired electrician. “But these guys have to train — they have to practice what they live.”

Dexter Freeman, another Tight Cuts barber, said he has come to know many of his Marine customers quite well, including two who were later killed on overseas deployments.

“The risk they take is part of being in the military, but it still makes me so sad,” Freeman said. “When they tell me they’re going to be deployed, I always tell them I’m praying for them. I mean, so many of these guys are just kids — 19, 20 years old.”

As Dickenson stood to leave after his haircut, he said he held out hope that the missing MARSOC Marines, with their special survival training, might somehow emerge alive. If not, he said, “there’ll be a lot of sorrowful people around here.”

Jacksonsville is home to many Marine families who live off the base, and Camp Lejeune dominates this sprawling town of 70,000. Banners welcoming Marines home from deployments are often hung from fences around the base. For more than a decade, people here have endured regular announcements of combat deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It never gets easier, Dickenson said. “We’re hoping for the best,” he said. “All we can do now is hope.”
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Zucchino reported from North Carolina and Hennigan from Washington.

Photo: A UH60 Black Hawk helicopter operated by the 82nd Airborne Division Combat Aviation Brigade takes off from the 82nd Airborne Division parade ground on May 5, 2013 (Sgt. Michael J. MacLeod/Wikimedia Commons)

At Least 2 Killed In Crash Of News Helicopter

At Least 2 Killed In Crash Of News Helicopter

By Brian M. Rosenthal, Steve Miletich and Jack Broom, The Seattle Times

SEATTLE — At least two people were killed Tuesday morning when a KOMO-TV helicopter crashed onto a street just south of the Space Needle.

The two who died were aboard the helicopter, according to the Seattle Fire Department.

The helicopter, which apparently was taking off around 7:40 a.m., dropped to the ground, landing on at least one car that burst into flames. A second car and a pickup were on fire when firefighters arrived, but it isn’t clear if they had been hit by the helicopter or ignited by the fuel, according to the Fire Department.

The driver of the car that was hit, a 37-year-old man, was taken in critical condition to Harborview Medical Center. He suffered burns over 50 percent of his body, department spokesman Kyle Moore said.

A woman in the second car walked away from the crash scene but later appeared at the Police Department’s West Precinct. The man in the pickup left the area before anyone could talk with him, Moore said. Authorities are looking for him.

Chris McColgan, 26, who lives a couple blocks west of the crash, said he was driving west on Broad Street when he stopped at the light on John Street, just two cars ahead of where the helicopter came down.

“It just blew up instantly,” said McColgan, who saw the helicopter fall from the helipad atop the KOMO building. “The crazy thing is, the movies get it exactly right. It’s that big … It felt like a movie. It still feels like a movie.”

Eyewitnesses told KOMO Radio that fuel from the crashed helicopter ran down Broad Street, causing at least one person to jump out of her car and flee the scene. The fuel burst into flame, sending thick clouds of black smoke into the air near the Space Needle.

The National Transportation Safety Board is on the scene conducting the investigation of the crash, according to Seattle police.

KOMO staff members reported that the fireball from the crashed copter could be seen from their newsroom. They said that an hour after the crash, staff members remained dazed, some sitting at their desks with their heads in their hands.

“It’s sad, it’s just so sad,” said one man who works near the crash site but didn’t want to be identified.

Looking west from the corner of Fifth Avenue and Broad Street he could see a river of water and foam and beyond that the burned-out wreckage of a car, truck and debris spread across the street.

Kelly Koopmans, reporter-anchor for KOMO-TV, said she was sitting at her desk, about 75 yards from the crash scene and first heard a loud rumble that she thought might be coming from a nearby construction site.

But the noise continued increasing. “It was so loud and so close, you had to know something had gone terribly, terribly wrong,” she said.

Rushing to the window, she saw an explosion of billowing flames and a thick plume of black smoke streaming up alongside the Space Needle.

According to a news report, the helicopter was a temporary chopper, used jointly with KING-TV in a shared arrangement.

No identities were available of those killed in the crash.

Photo: Bgautrea via Flickr