JUNCTION CITY, Calif. — Firefighters continued battling fires in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest today as federal officials began arriving to investigate the cause of a deadly helicopter crash and grief counselors descended on the base camp here to debrief witnesses and offer aid to crew members.
At an early morning briefing for firefighters, Jeff Currier, a member of the air support group, told the assembled crowd that when “it feels like you’ve been kicked in the head … you have to move on. We’ll be 100 percent on the move.”
Mike Donch, a human resources specialist with the firefighting effort, said two “critical incident management teams” were to arrive to begin debriefing crew members who witnessed Tuesday’s helicopter crash that was believed to have killed nine people and injured four. Grief counseling also would be available for any firefighters who need it, he said.
After the 6 a.m. briefing, Russ Gordon, director of the air operations branch for the Iron Complex fire, spoke briefly about the toll a fatal accident takes on the surviving flight team. The team of about 100 people includes pilots, radio operators, crewmen and supervisors.
“Any time that you have an incident with one of your aircraft, you take it personally,” Gordon said. “One of your family has been taken from you,” he said, but “you still have to recover quickly. You still have to go into rescue and recovery.”
The Sikorksy helicopter crashed about 7:45 p.m. Tuesday while taking off from a remote site about 35 miles northwest of Redding in Northern California, officials said.
The chopper was shuttling a hand crew back to its base in Junction City after three days of cutting fire lines in the wilderness. It took off with 11 firefighters and two pilots from a clearing cut by chain saws in the forest on a steep mountainside.
One of the survivors, Richard Schroeder, 42, said from his hospital room in Redding that it seemed that the helicopter’s rotor hit a tree as it was taking off.
The Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board were sending investigators to the scene to determine why the helicopter failed to lift off.
Ten of the victims, including Schroeder, are affiliated with Merlin, Ore.-based Grayback Forestry, one of the largest private firefighting contractors. The company identified two other survivors also from Medford: Michael Brown, 20, and Jonathan Frohreich, 18. Grayback was still notifying relatives of the missing individuals Wednesday night and had not released their names.
Brown, Frohreich and another victim were taken to the University of California, Davis Regional Burn Center in Sacramento. On Thursday, Brown was upgraded from serious to fair condition, Frohreich from critical to serious and the other victim remains in critical condition, hospital officials said.
Dennis Hulbert, the U.S. Forest Service aviation director for California, notified the widow of a Forest Service employee who died in the crash.
“It’s too early to know anything,” he said, referring to the cause of the crash. “There are a lot of variables. There was a post-crash fire. It’s still burning. It was horrific.”
The crew was among 1,200 firefighters, assisted by nine helicopters, who were battling the Iron and Alps complex fires in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest that have burned 86,000 acres. Another firefighter assigned to the fires died in late July when he was hit by a falling tree. The lightning fire started June 21 and is 87 percent contained.
Schroeder said the crew was being transported back for rest because clouds were rolling in and they expected heavy lightning strikes. He said they were the third group to go out from that spot Tuesday.
The Sikorsky S-61 was owned by Carson Helicopters of Grants Pass, Ore., which describes itself as one of the largest firefighting helicopter contractors with the Forest Service and Department of the Interior.
In April, the FAA issued an “airworthiness directive” regarding Sikorsky S-model helicopters after one developed fatigue failures in the main rotor shaft. Carson Helicopters was among the companies alerted to the problem.
The FAA also outlined a list of actions to “prevent structural failure, loss of power to the main rotor, and subsequent loss of control of the helicopter.”
Carson filed comments in May, saying it had been six months since the company had ordered some of the relevant parts from Sikorsky and they were expected to arrive this month.
According to a review of Forest Service records, Carson is one of several aviation companies regularly used by the agency to fight wildfires in California. From 2000 to 2007, the company was paid more than $10 million by the Forest Service for its work in the state.
Bob Madden, Carson’s director of corporate affairs, said the S-61 aircraft was inspected twice a day as part of its agreement with the Forest Service and was in good shape.
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