WV Gazette-Mail wrote:February 18, 2010
Navy chopper crash survivors injuries light
All 17, including 4 from W.Va., rescued from remote area
SNOWSHOE, W.Va. -- Crewmen and passengers of a U.S. Navy helicopter that went down Thursday spent the night warming themselves around campfires as they awaited rescue crews, who used snowmobiles and snowcats to reach the crash site atop a rugged, snow-covered mountain in Pocahontas County.
All 17 Navy, Marine Corps and National Guard personnel aboard were rescued by late Friday morning. They were said to have injuries no worse than broken bones and minor bruises.
With temperatures in the teens and four feet of snow on the ground, rescuers had to travel more than three miles from the nearest road, through heavily wooded and steep terrain, to reach the crash site north of Snowshoe Mountain Resort and west of Green Bank.
"These were very challenging conditions," said Cmdr. Jon Kline of the Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 26, the Norfolk Naval Station unit to which the aircraft was assigned. "It was arduous."
Nine of the passengers were treated and released Friday afternoon from Davis Memorial Hospital in Elkins and another was in transit to that facility early Friday evening. Three were admitted at the University of Virginia Trauma Center in Charlottesville, Va., and four more were on their way to that facility.
In a news release Friday afternoon, Navy officials said "there were injuries reported, ranging from minor bruises to fractures, but none of the injuries are considered life threatening."
Those aboard the Knighthawk included 11 Navy personnel and two Marines, as well as four National Guard personnel from a unit in Williamstown, Wood County.
All were equipped for cold weather, because they were on their way from Fort Pickett, near Blackstone, Va., to Camp Dawson, in Preston County, for an annual U.S.-NATO training exercise called Southbound Trooper X.
"They put their extensive survival training to use while they waited to be evacuated," said Capt. Steve Schreiber, commander of Helicopter Sea Combat Wing Atlantic.
Military officials initially said the aircraft had crashed, but later said the helicopter pilot had executed a "forced, hard landing." Officials declined to provide any information about what prompted such a maneuver, but said the Navy would conduct a full investigation.
Members of the Shavers Fork Fire Department, based at Snowshoe Mountain Resort, used a fleet of snowmobiles and two tracked snow-grooming machines from the ski resort to travel a back road, then the tracks of the West Virginia Central Railroad, to reach the crash site.
"We got the coordinates of the crash location from the military and plugged them into our GPS units," said Fire Chief Shannon Boehmer.
After traveling more than six miles through freezing rain and 20-mile-per-hour winds, the rescuers traveled as far as they could on the railroad tracks. Through a radio link with the orbiting C-130, they asked the crash survivors to mark their position.
"They set off flares and fired shots in the air," said Boehmer. The crash site was only three-fourths of a mile away, but it was near the top of a steep, 4,254-foot knob overlooking Shavers Fork, near its junction with a tributary stream, Second Fork.
"The guys jumped into snowshoes and headed up the hill," Boehmer said, but because of the steep grade, the amount of gear being packed in, and snow drifts as deep as five feet, it took 45 minutes to get to the crash site.
"The military medics who had been lowered in were already treating the men, who had built a warming fire," Boehmer said. "Their injuries ranged from a bruised hand to broken bones. Some of them were able to walk out, some needed some help and others had to be placed on backboards and be carried out."
Boehmer said the severely damaged helicopter came to rest in a stand of red spruce about halfway between Snowshoe and the Cheat Mountain Club, not far from the abandoned logging camp of Spruce. In summer, the Cheat Mountain Salamander excursion train passes over the tracks used by the rescuers to reach the injured military personnel.
The crash survivors were taken from the scene two or three at a time, with the most severely injured being evacuated first. The evacuation process, which began not long after the rescuers arrived at about 9 p.m. Thursday, lasted through the night, with the final survivor arriving at Snowshoe at 12:27 p.m. Friday.
"It was a long night," said Boehmer, "but it was great to have a good outcome -- a helicopter crash with no fatalities.
"While the thick snow made it very hard to get to those men, and then get them out, it also had to have cushioned the crash. All that snow may have kept them alive."
Personnel from the West Virginia National Guard 130th Airlift Wing's security unit were at the crash site Friday to preserve its integrity for an investigation.
The small private runway at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank was used as a staging area for National Guard search helicopters. The observatory opened its dormitory and dining facilities to the military flight and logistics crews who spent Thursday night and much of Friday there.
"I think it was phenomenal that we were able to help out," said observatory director Karen O'Neil. "I hope they come back to visit us later. Many of them said they'd never heard of us before."
Three years ago, in January 2007, three Navy sailors were killed when a Knighthawk helicopter crashed into the Pacific Ocean off San Clemente Island, along the Southern California coast. That aircraft suffered an apparent tail-rotor drive failure and spun tail first into the sea.
Jim Collins, a lawyer for the families of the sailors killed in the 2007 crash, said that if the aircraft in this week's incident was able to make a forced landing, it was unlikely experiencing the same tail-rotor drive failure. More likely, Collins said, would be an engine problem.
The helicopter departed Fort Pickett late Thursday morning, and apparently went down shortly before 1 p.m., officials said.
Early reports from the Federal Aviation Administration indicated the aircraft was down somewhere south of Lewisburg, in either Greenbrier or Monroe county. FAA officials also said all 17 crewmen and passengers had been rescued and taken by air to a Roanoke, Va., hospital.
That turned out to be inaccurate, and a flurry of conflicting reports from various military and civilian agencies followed, creating confusion about where the aircraft was and whether it actually had been found.
Later, military officials said the helicopter had been found at about 7:15 p.m. by a West Virginia Army National Guard HH-60 Black Hawk helicopter near Bald Knob, about 75 miles north of Lewisburg.
Two medics were lowered to the site to assess the situation and provide emergency treatment. A C-130 Hercules aircraft from the 130th Airlift Wing in Charleston circled the site to maintain communications.
Military officials waited nearly three hours to announce that information, however, and civilian leaders, including Gov. Joe Manchin's office, declined to comment on the search-and-rescue efforts.
Navy spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Phil Rosi said the weather and terrain made communications difficult, and that military officials wanted to get complete information before they told the news media and the public what had happened.
"It was just kind of a confluence of problems with the communications," Rosi said Friday afternoon. "We wanted to make sure we had the most accurate and up-to-date information. We chose to wait and be a little more accurate."
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