Chopper crashes fighting fire
The pilot is critically injured after he was trying to fill a bucket at a Kauai reservoir
A 20-year-old chopper pilot is in critical condition after his helicopter crashed into a reservoir Sunday evening as he was attempting to fill a bucket of water to help fight a nearby brush fire, according to a Kauai county official.
The pilot, identified as Jonathon D'Attilio, is reported in critical condition at Wilcox Hospital, said Mary Daubert, the public information officer for the county.
The crash of the McDonald Douglas 369FF helicopter was reported at about 5:40 p.m., said Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Paul Turk from Washington, D.C., yesterday. D'Attilio was the only person on board the helicopter, which apparently crashed into the De Mello Reservoir upside down.
Kauai Battalion Chief Bill Quinlan and rescue specialists from the Lihue fire station pulled D'Attilio from the wreckage in the reservoir, Daubert said. Rescue workers and emergency medical technicians administered cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
D'Attilio had just left the parking lot at Wilcox Hospital to drop water on a brush fire in Kapaia Valley.
He works for Inter-island Helicopters, which has a contract to provide services to the Fire Department, Daubert said. She said the helicopter had been recovered from the reservoir, but she did not know where it was taken.
A National Transportation Safety Board official is on Kauai to begin the investigation of the crash, Turk said.
Another Inter-island Helicopters MD 369FF was severely damaged last year while fighting a brush fire. On July 15, 2004, the helicopter's main rotor blades hit a tree after dumping water on a fire near Lihue. The pilot made an emergency landing and suffered only minor injuries, but the helicopter rolled onto its side.
The NTSB blamed that crash on the pilot's misjudgment of the clearance between the tree and the main rotor blades, and also cited the high workload of the pilot and lack of experience with the water bucket as contributing factors.
Yesterday's Kapaia brush fire burned about three to five acres and had started at about 3 p.m. at the bottom of the valley. It was not considered a threat by 6:45 p.m.
Earlier, elderly residents of the nearby Sun Village condominium were evacuated due to excessive smoke from the fire and returned after an hour.
The cause of the brush fire is still under investigation.