Medical Helicopter Crashes With Six Aboard

A medical helicopter with two accident victims and four others aboard became entangled in an overhead wire and plunged to the ground just before dawn Sunday, showering chunks of its tail rotor near emergency workers at the accident scene.

The injured occupants of the craft sustained no further injuries in the 5:25 a.m. crash near La Habra, though the pilot was hospitalized for observation and the two automobile crash victims remained in serious condition at a Fullerton hospital, police reported.

The pilot “did an outstanding job” of bringing the careening helicopter down upright, avoiding several tanks and pipelines of extremely flammable material at a Standard Oil facility nearby, La Habra Police Sgt. Perry Miller said.

The Med-Air helicopter, operated by Western Medical Center of Santa Ana, was dispatched to pick up two victims from a one-car crash near Beach Boulevard and Imperial Highway in an unincorporated area near La Habra.

Carrying the two victims, a La Habra paramedic and two Western Medical flight nurses, pilot Will Gibbons lifted off but struck a power pole guy wire suspended about 40 feet above the street, Miller said. The wire chopped off the helicopter’s tail rotor, pieces of which rained down near emergency workers, and the helicopter went out of control, Miller said.

The helicopter began pitching and rolling as it fell earthward, at one point rolling nearly upside down, Miller said. “He was able to get it where it landed belly down, so definitely, the pilot did a fantastic job, because if it would have flipped over, there would have been a strong likelihood of everybody being killed.”

The helicopter came to rest in a cloud of smoke and dust about 30 feet from where it had struck the wire, its support struts crunching beneath it. The occupants were evacuated while the main rotor was still turning, and the pilot had to shut down the engine manually from outside the cockpit, according to California Highway Patrol spokesman John Wilde.

There was no fire, but the helicopter was “very badly damaged,” said Western Medical Center spokesman Gus Alagna.

The two accident victims, Deborah McFaul, 15, and Julie Kite, 16, were transported by ambulance to St. Jude Hospital in Fullerton, where they were both listed in serious condition in the intensive care unit after surgery.

A La Habra paramedic who accompanied them aboard the helicopter, Ed Saldana, was treated and released at La Habra Community Hospital. The two flight nurses, Frank Miranda and David Swets, were treated and released at Western Medical Center, where pilot Gibbons was admitted for observation after complaining of abdominal pains.

Gibbons declined Sunday to be interviewed, saying only that he was feeling “not too bad” after the incident.

Another man, Henry Rodriguez, 18, was injured in the car crash and was treated and released at St. Jude Hospital.