Experienced crew dead in California medical helicopter crash.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
By DUANE W. GANG, LISA O'NEILL-HILL and IMRAN GHORI
The Press-Enterprise
AIR AMBULANCES: The number of crashes has increased in recent years, a federal study finds.
The pilot, nurse and paramedic of an air ambulance that crashed Sunday night in a foggy, hilly area near the summit of the Cajon Pass were an experienced crew, company officials and colleagues said Monday.
The three died when the Mercy Air Services Inc. helicopter went down about 6 p.m. on its way back to Victorville after dropping off a patient at Loma Linda University Medical Center.
As investigators began combing the wreckage for answers Monday, friends, family and co-workers were hit hard by the fatal crash.
Paul LaTour, 46, of Apple Valley, was a retired military pilot whose son followed in his father's footsteps and is stationed overseas.
Flight nurse Katrina J. Kish, 42, of Yucaipa, for years had volunteered as a reserve deputy with the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department.
Paramedic Jerald W. Miller, 40, of Apple Valley, had been married on a cruise just months ago.
"They are there just like our family," said Victorville fire Capt. Pete Lawson, who works at station 319, where the crew was based.
"When they take off and go on a call ... we worry about them," he said. "And as we get a call, they worry about us, I'm sure."
Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board arrived on scene Monday to begin determining how the Bell 412 helicopter crashed. The cause remains unknown.
Patrick Jones, an NTSB air-safety investigator, said pilot error, mechanical failure and weather will all be studied.
"We are not going to jump to any conclusions," he said near the accident scene. "Our job is to gather the facts."
The accident was the latest for an air ambulance industry that has seen the number of crashes increase in recent years. Nearly 40 people have died in accidents between 2002 and 2005.
While the number of hours flown is increasing, the accident rate is jumping far faster, a federal study found.
Mercy Air has grounded its Inland helicopters as fellow pilots and crew members grieve the loss of their colleagues, said Craig Yale, vice president of corporate development for Air Methods Corp., the parent company for Mercy Air.
He said Air Methods helicopters in Nevada and elsewhere in California, along with units from the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department, will provide coverage until pilots feel comfortable flying again.
Flying Through Fog
The weather in the Cajon Pass was foggy Sunday night as the helicopter crew departed Loma Linda University Medical Center about an hour after sunset. At 5:52 p.m., Mercy Air received its last radio communication from the pilot.
Three minutes later, at 5:55 p.m., Mercy Air lost view of the helicopter on the company's satellite tracking system, Yale said.
Four minutes after that, around 6 p.m., Mercy Air received a report about a downed aircraft from the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department, Yale said.
The helicopter crashed in rugged terrain about a mile east of Interstate 15 and south of the Oak Hills area.
The helicopter burst into flames and started a 2-acre brush fire, said Tim Wessel, a San Bernardino County fire chief in the North Desert Division.
The wreckage sits in a ravine below a large electrical transmission tower. The power lines appeared intact, and officials say early reports about the helicopter hitting the lines appeared to be wrong.
A few pieces of white paneling and rotor blades remain. A stretcher board was visible amid the debris.
The Cajon Pass can be difficult for pilots to navigate and, in extreme weather, Mercy Air often must fly patients to Palm Springs instead of valley hospitals, said Roy Cox, Mercy Air's program manager.
Cpl. Brian Miller, a helicopter pilot with the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department Aviation Unit, said the weather over the pass can vary, from foggy days with poor visibility to clear afternoons where aircraft are bounced by gusting Santa Ana winds that top 50 mph.
The summit of the Cajon Pass sits at 4,190 feet in elevation.
"Sometimes it's low ground fog and everything above it is clear, and sometimes it's the opposite," he said.
He flew over the Cajon Pass about nine hours before the crash, and the weather was not a problem. But conditions could have changed dramatically as the day progressed, he said.
Growing Industry
The Federal Aviation Administration estimates about 650 emergency medical helicopters are in operation nationwide in an industry that has grown swiftly since 2000.
The major causes of crashes are pilots flying helicopters into the ground, pilots becoming disoriented, and pilots inadvertently flying into bad weather, the FAA said. The NTSB issued a special investigation report on crashes early this year.
Emergency medical helicopter flight hours increased by 54 percent since 1991, but the rate of accidents per 100,000 flight hours increased 77 percent, the NTSB report said.
A 2002 study by the Air Medical Physician Association found that 49 percent of the air ambulance crashes occur at night, even though only 38 percent of flights were at that time.
Medical helicopter pilots also cope with difficulties not faced by other types of pilots, such as time pressure to reach critically ill patients, the study found.
Yale said Air Methods already voluntarily operates under strict rules, has a solid safety record and is working to put in place new FAA recommendations.
The company has had four fatal accidents, including Sunday's, in the last decade, Yale said.
On Sept. 7, 2002, a Nevada-based Mercy Air helicopter crashed in Nipton, killing three. In January 2005, Air Methods helicopters crashed in Washington, D.C., and in Mississippi, he said.
The Washington crash killed two and injured one. The Tupelo, Miss., accident left one person dead.
Years of Experience
Family and friends visited the crash site Monday afternoon but declined to be interviewed.
LaTour had flown for Mercy Air for one year.
He was retired from the military and had 3,000 hours under his belt, Yale said.
Kish had been with the company for nearly seven years, while Miller had worked for Mercy Air for two years, Yale said.
The Mercy Air crew worked out of station 319 at Southern California Logistics Airport in Victorville.
"When we heard there was an accident, we were hoping and praying it wasn't our airship," said Lawson, the station 319 captain.
Lawson said the crew was skilled and experienced.
"If there was a problem, they would have turned around," Lawson said.
LaTour talked often about his wife and son, Lawson said.
"I always thought he was just recently married. He was always talking about his bride," he said. In fact, LaTour had been married for many years, Lawson said.
One of LaTour's neighbors said the pilot liked cars, motorcycles, had a large motor home and was mechanically inclined.
"His garage is meticulous," said Willis Whitlock, a teacher at Apple Valley Middle School.
Whitlock said LaTour has a daughter in the Navy who was married on Friday.
Kish has been at the station the longest.
Her husband, Tim Kish, is a fire captain with the Riverside County Fire Department.
"She was always out there doing something for somebody, whether it was working at other hospitals or working with the sheriffs," Lawson said. "She always seemed like she wanted to be in the action."
The Kishes have a 9-year-old son, according to neighbors along the Moreno Valley street where they used to live. The couple moved earlier this year to Katrina Kish's "dream house" in Yucaipa, neighbors said.
Lawson said he was closest to Miller. Everyone called him Jerry. Miller had just gotten married a few months ago on a cruise. His wife went by the station frequently and took a Thanksgiving dinner from Marie Callendar's to the firefighters the day before Thanksgiving.
On Monday, there was a void outside Station 319 where the helicopter usually is parked, Lawson said.
"There's an empty spot on the ramp back there but there's an empty spot in a lot of people's hearts right now, a definite void."
Staff writers Michael Fisher, Sharon McNary and Massiel Ladrón De Guevara contributed to this report.
top