On your list of weird starts to wildland fires, you can now add military helicopter accidents.
An aviation mishap involving an Army AH-64E Apache occurred in Grant County, Washington about 4:30 p.m. on the evening of September 29.
The helicopter was assigned to 4-6 Air Cavalry Squadron, 16th Combat Aviation Brigade during a training exercise near Beverly, and it struck powerlines over the river and had to make a hard landing.
Both pilots are okay; they were returned to the Yakima Training Center for medical evaluation. The accident caused a small fire near the Columbia River, according to KREM 2 in Spokane.
State Route 243 was closed at Milepost 18 for less than an hour as a result of the incident. Later in the evening, lines were reportedly still down in the river.
Apache after Columbia River incident — Grant County Sheriff photoThe Grant County Sheriff’s Office provided initial information. “Army helicopter made a hard landing after striking power lines over the Columbia River,” they said. “Crew is OK.”
6 Comments
Ummm…
OOPS!
You can see a length of the power line still wrapped around the helicopter. Right below the main rotor and trailing back along the fuselage.
I think it was about 2003 I was on a fire on Arizona State lands southeast of Tucson in Gardner Canyon. A power line across the canyon was down and had started the fire. The power company came out to fix the line and said, “One of your retardant planes cut that power line.” Our IC told them no, the power line was down before the retardant planes arrived on the fire. The US Border Patrol finally confessed. Their Black Hawk helicopter had cut the line. They have wire cutter installed on their helicopters.
In the badass-crashes-that-didn’t-happen category, we also have this submission:
Aviation Safety Communique
Reported by: USFS Ochoco, Prineville, Oregon
Date: 02/13/97 Local time: 1545 Injuries: no Damage: no
Location: North Fork Crooked River along Forest boundary T15S R21E
Mission: Type: elk census (recon), OR Dept. of Fish and Wildlife. Persons onboard: 3
Aircraft: Hiller 12E
https://www.avweb.com/flight-safety/saved-by-a-leatherman-tool/
I was at an outdoor writers’ conference in 1999 and the Leatherman people had a “booth” set up out at Whiskeytown by the lake. I asked them if they knew they were famous by the name of all-purpose helicopter repair tool. They looked at me like “this chick’s nuts.” So I told them the ODFW story. Not at all fictional and a 20+-year favorite.
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p.s. It’s a little hard to read because formatting, but it’s worth the effort!
Non-helo guys in the back:
“Autorotation? What’s that?”
Our Local news says they flew a mile with cable trailing then landed on a gravel bar. It also says they don’t know how the helicopter will be removed. I suspect they will have a mechanic inspect it and ferry it to the Yakima Fireing Center. Showing my age here. I grew up in Yakima and haven’t adopted the Joint base names yet. Tom Jones
https://www.nbcrightnow.com/top_video/helicopter-removed-after-hard-landing-in-grant-county/video_76a27120-69e7-11ee-a84f-ff3d5a063ee9.html.
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