In the Eye of the Storm : Chopper Pilots: High-Visibility Heroes of the Air

For television news junkies, the already crowded skies over Southern California seemed to be wall-to-wall whirlybirds this week, and the men who fly them became heroes.

With weather forecasters predicting deluge through the weekend, the small battalion of helicopter pilots will probably continue to top the morning, noon and evening newscasts, according to news departments up and down the dial. The heretofore anonymous pilots--KNBC Channel 4’s Bob Pettee, KCBS Channel 2’s Paul Hollenbeck, KTLA Channel 5’s John Tamburro, KCAL Channel 9’s Kent Pierce and KCOP Channel 13’s Bob Tur, among others--have become as well known to TV audiences this week as their favorite evening news anchor.

On Wednesday, KNBC’s Pettee saved a man and his dog from a dry creek in Ventura County that, following a cloudburst, had become a torrent.

“I was in Vietnam and I don’t need any hero’s song for this,” Pettee said in an interview later. “There’s not a helicopter pilot anywhere that is not spring-loaded to help somebody.”

There’s not a TV helicopter pilot who isn’t spring-loaded to grab off dramatic footage, either.

KCAL’s Pierce, who narrated while his cameraman shot videotape of a man being pulled out of the flooded Sepulveda Basin on Monday, saw his work shown over and over throughout the evening on CBS and CNN, in large part because the KCAL crew captured the only footage of the man, Michael Ross, falling about 100 feet back into the water just before he was to be pulled to safety aboard another helicopter piloted by a Ventura County rescue crew.

“They were up that first day in ‘Sky 9’ for three hours over the flood area,” said KCAL spokeswoman Jennifer Barnett. “He described what he was seeing while our cameraman shot it.”

That is the routine followed by virtually all of the leased helicopter services that have begun offering their services to every station in Los Angeles in recent years. They operate from Burbank, Santa Monica and Van Nuys airports, normally delivering traffic reports during morning and afternoon drivetime. During their non-TV time, they deliver transplant organs to hospitals, shuttle executives from airport to airport and fly for movie companies.

But during times of disaster--such as earthquakes, fires or this recent spate of thunderstorms--they become stars.

Tamburro, who flew a leased West Coast Helicopter chopper in “The Last Boy Scout,” piloted KTLA’s Skycam helicopter during the storm. He could have been a hero, a la Pettee, by aiding a stranded fire captain Wednesday morning in Ventura. But he chose not to.

“We were close, but we didn’t want to overstep our bounds,” he said.

Instead, he hovered nearby, reporting live for the KTLA morning news program while his cameraman recorded the nip-and-tuck action below. Two rescuers did show up in a raft and picked up the fire captain, he said.

TV pilots fly a thin line during disaster, trying for the kind of dramatic footage that brought Pierce and Pettee national recognition while, at the same time, staying out of the way of the authorities.

KCOP’s Bob Tur, who had his pilot’s license suspended two months ago following a dispute with the Federal Aviation Administration over alleged recklessness, has become the chief example of overstepping bounds. While being lauded for heroism, he has also been criticized by his fellow TV helicopter competition and by city and county authorities for sometimes being too daring.

He has continued to fly while he appeals the FAA suspension, but only as a passenger, delivering news and traffic reports to KNX-AM (1070) as well as KCOP. Robert Prewett, another pilot, controls the helicopter.

With the overflow of the Sepulveda dam on Monday, Tur once more found himself in hot water.

In dramatic footage aired over KCOP, KABC, KCBS and “Inside Edition,” Tur’s helicopter dropped cameraman Larry Welk into the water where a man appeared to be drowning. Welk subsequently drifted to a point where two lifeguards were able to rescue both men.

According to Tur, the live coverage, aired over KCOP as the rescue took place, has led to questions from the Los Angeles Fire Department and the City Attorney’s office about whether Tur was at the controls of the helicopter. Ironically, Tur said, he, Welk and Prewett were commended for their heroism by Los Angeles City Councilwoman Joy Picus at the same time that he was being investigated for flying with a suspended license.

Tur would neither confirm nor deny that he was piloting the helicopter.

“I have no delusions over what I do,” Tur said. “I’ve been a reporter and photographer for 15 years. Channel 5 (Tamburro) hovered over a firefighter who may have drowned in Ventura County. We suspended our televised coverage to rescue the guy we saw.”

But the oft-repeated videotape of daring rescues--implying that hordes of pilots range over flooded disaster vistas--is mostly an illusion. There have actually been fewer of Southern California’s 14,000 aircraft and 26,000 licensed pilots hovering over Los Angeles in recent days, and that includes helicopter pilots.

“If you look at the TV stations who have, maybe, five (helicopters) up, and the Los Angeles Fire Department, which has a half-dozen helicopters, and Ventura County, which has only one, we’re looking at no more than two dozen aircraft (at disaster scenes),” said Fred O’Donnell, assistant public affairs director for the Federal Aviation Administration on the West Coast.

On any given summer weekend, when skies are clear and all 19 of the airports are open for business, there are far more aircraft aloft and more chance of a mishap, he said.