coptermd.com

In the early 90’s the company that I was with was engaged in logging operations in the Sierra Nevada Mountains about 25 miles west south west of Tahoe.

 We were using a Restricted Type CH54 SkyCrane for a lift ship and a Bell 206B3 for a choker /support ship.

Now for those of you that have never had the opportunity to participate in a heli-logging aka: aerial timber harvesting operation the short explanation of how it works is this.

Typically, when you set up the site there are two landings or LZs, one for the timber where the lift ship will deposit the logs and the loaders will load them on the logging trucks to be hauled to the mills. The second is the Helicopter landing where the ships get fuel and spend the time they are not flying. This is also where maintenance is performed.

On the jobs you usually have two helicopters, one heavy or large medium ship to lift and haul the timber and one light ship to move people or equipment and to recover the load chokers from the log landing. And then redistribute them to the personnel down in the trees so they can be placed on the fallen logs so that the lift ship can be hooked on to them. Some companies have complex grappling assemblies that just grab the logs without using the choker cables but we were still doing it the old fashioned way. The choker chasers work on the log landing, they remove the choker cables from the logs as they are deposited on the landing and roll them up and bundle them usually into packs of ten each. The choker ship picks up these bundles on a two or three hundred foot line beneath the ship and flies them out and lowers them to the setters in the trees who are the individuals that place the chokers around the fallen trees where the hookers can connect them to the releasable cargo hook at the end of a two or three hundred foot cable hanging beneath the lift ship. The logs are then lifted up out of the trees and flown to the log landing and the process starts again.

On the job that we were on when this story took place we were set up with the helicopter landing on top of a ridge above a gorge that dropped steeply thirty one hundred feet to a river below. The Log landing was across the gorge and about a mile downstream from the helicopter landing and the harvesting site was basically all along the ridge and upper part of the gorge on the same side as the log landing.

As logging jobs went it was a pretty good one. The turns or hauls were short so there was a lot of wood being moved and the helicopters were behaving well.

One afternoon everything was going good, the lift ship had gotten fuel a few minutes earlier and we were in the process of cleaning up the landing area and straightening up the service van so we could inventory and place an order from the home office for consumables and such. Do to the ruggedness of the terrain we had gotten used to the fact that the radio that was supposed to keep us in touch with the helicopters faded in and out depending on where the ships were geographically.

We heard the lift ship call, they were making a pick 19,000 pounds on the load cell. A moment later we heard what sounded like screaming then static then silence. I grabbed the radio mike and tried to raise the lift ship. The choker ship came on but was badly broken.. garble garble “going down” garble garble “in the water” garble garble “ survivors.”  

I keyed the mike and called the choker pilot by name and said “I only received SURVIVORS no other transmission was readable what’s going on respond now”

A few seconds went by and the choker ship pilot came back on the radio. “The crane is down at the bottom in the river and it’s on fire what should I do?”

“Go survey while we get gear together radio back with status as soon as you have climbed back out enough to reach me”

“Understood, I’m headed down”

At this point I grabbed the Sat. phone in the front seat of the truck and called the California Division of Forestry and reported that I had a helicopter down in the forest and it was on fire and gave them the Lat Long of the landing telling them it was in the bottom of the gorge adjacent to our location.

After about five minutes we were standing by with axes, saws and hammers when the pilot of the choker ship came back on the air and said that he had both of the other pilots on board and they were uninjured except for a few scratches and scrapes.

 I picked up the Sat phone again and called the home office. I was still explaining the situation to the chief pilot when the choker ship landed on the far side of the landing and the two skycrane pilots climbed out and headed my way. As the senior pilot got close he shouted “Who is on the phone” and I told him it was the chief pilot he said “great, gimmy that” and took the phone from my hand held it up to his face and said simply “I QUIT” handed  me back the phone and walked off.

 The fire burned itself out twenty minutes before the air-tankers showed up followed 10 minutes later by a BO105 with a helitack crew on board. They saw the helicopter on its side in the river but since the fire danger had subsided they returned home with taking any action.

As soon as we had secured our site we all headed into town picked up the senior pilot along the road where he was walking the twenty five miles back to town. I dropped the pilots at the motel and took my crew to the ER to have urinalysis tests administered to protect ourselves and the company.

It took two days to get the skycrane out of the river. We eventually lifted it out with another ship of the same type and deposited it at a nearby airport where a truck could load the carcass for removal.

Three months later I was called to give a deposition for the insurance company who was fighting paying for the Wildland Fire resources that responded to my call. When asked why I made the call I explained that I figured the cost was less than that of one hundred thousand acres of old growth timber. At that point the deposition came to an abrupt end and I never heard anything else about it.

There is no moral to this story. I just hope you derived a few moments of entertainment from its telling.