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Copter crash probes The cause of a Feb. 12 collision between two Army Black Hawk helicopters that killed six soldiers may not be determined for at least a week, according to an Army spokeswoman.
need week or more
An Army spokeswoman says
'it's really too early to start
thinking about pointing fingers'By Treena Shapiro
Star-BulletinSo far, "nothing obvious has been identified as being a causal factor," said Maj. Nancy Makowski, public relations officer at Schofield Barracks.
At a news conference yesterday, Makowski said the Army was performing both a centralized accident investigation and a collateral investigation.
The role of the safety team, led by officials from the U.S. Army Safety Center in Fort Rucker, Ala., is to determine the cause and make recommendations to the Army to ensure that an accident like this does not occur again.
The collateral investigation, performed by the command that suffered the incident, could be used to determined whether any personnel action must be taken or for litigation purposes, Makowski said.
While it could lead to a criminal investigation, "it's really too early to start thinking about pointing fingers. We're going to take the investigation one step at a time, very slowly, very methodically," she said.
No evidence has surfaced to dispute the claim by one witness aboard one helicopter that the collision occurred when the second helicopter hit the other with a Humvee it had been sling-loading.
"It seems clear that some kind of contact took place, although it's not clear what the circumstances were," Makowski said. "My understanding is that they had both been coming in to land."
Experts will be looking into human, environmental and material conditions that could have led to the crash, including whether the sling-load riggings had been used correctly.
After a 12-hour pause to perform risk assessment immediately after the accident, the field training exercise in which it occurred went on as scheduled, except that it ended a day early so that members of the 25th Infantry Division's (Light) Aviation Regiment and 27th Infantry Regiment could attend services for the six soldiers killed in the accident.
Seventeen men were involved in the collision, and Makowski said only one, Pfc. Michael Welch of Kenner, La., is still hospitalized. "We hope that he'll be able to be released in the next couple days," she said.
The Army was expected to remove from the Kahuku Military Training Area yesterday the second helicopter and transport it to Wheeler Army Airfield. Once the helicopter is removed, an environmental team will scan the area for spilled oil and any personal items and debris from the accident. When the field has been cleared, the Kahuku Motocross Park, which shares the same ground as the training area, will reopen for races.