Black Hawk Down for real (1 Viewer)

[Jassen M. West]

On CNN they are showing footage of a rescue operation where an Army Black Hawk Chopper was sent in to resuce climbers on Mt Hood,Oregon. They had become trapped in some kind of crevice 3 of the hikers were dead and there were 4 left. the helicopter was hovering maybe 15-29 ft off the snow when it seemed to lose lift not uncommon at the altitude it was operating at , about 10,500 ft, but being so close to the ground the pilot had no way to recover. The main blades hit and broke apart the body of the helicopter landed in the snow and rolled about 5 times down the mountain. CNN "specialist" say that there is a very good chance that everyone in the chopper survived though nothing is confirmed. I hope everyone is ok......

---
jay

 

[Greg_R]

Current CNN article
It looks like at least one person had the chopper roll over them during the crash...

 

[MickeS]

Since, the "Black hawk Down" incident was very real, perhaps a subject line change would be in order.

 

[Ron-P]

Watch the video. Very sad. Hopefully they survive.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/759138.asp?pne=msn
Peace Out~

 

[Bill J]

Black Hawk Down for real

So what happened in Somalia on October 3, 1993 wasn't real????
Am I missing something here?

 

[Jay H]

News this morning says that 3 of the 4 chopper people are in the hospital and all 4 survived so I guess the 4th person wasn't injured enough to require hospitalization.
2 of the guys are from LI and some are off-duty firemen from Oregon. I think these are the people who were doing Liberty Ridge on Mt. Rainier when things went south..
Oops, wrong tragedy... The helicopter was on Mt. Hood. Not a good week I guess out there..
It's "Crevasse", BTW
Jay

 

[KyleK]

My best friend's brother was actually up there snowboarding and saw the helicopter go down. It actually seemed like he thought it was a little amusing that NINE people fell down the crevasse.
I just watched the video, that is unreal!

Kyle

 

[Ron-P]

Well, if it wasn't for those extremely stupid climbers. The guys in the helicopter would all be just fine right now.
Peace Out~

 

[Philip_G]

not the best place to be hovering
I think that altitude is pretty damn close to the service ceiling of that helicopter

 

[Damian James]

I watched it live as it was happening, it seriously was like watching a movie; very surreal. I have a feeling it'll be some mechanical difficulty, as I watched closely on the replays and didn't see any initial contact with the ground till it was already swerving. No 'official' comment has been made, but KGW was saying today that everybody believes the pilot fought really hard to steer the out of control chopper away from the people on the ground. Pretty good flying there!

 

[Philip_G]

I wonder if there are any rotary pilots on the board.. I'm willing to bet it was a performance issue and not mechanical failure. Need a rotary freak to sort it for us

 

[Jay H]

As to the accident, from what I hear, it was a bunch of climbers in three separate groups. Each group linked together as the normal fashion it is when climbing up high, using ropes and belays. However, somehow either the groups were WAYYYYY too close to each other or nobody was doing the proper belay and supposedly somebody in the top group slipped, taking down all the roped members who fell onto a separate group below them who then all fell into another group!!!!
As far as the Pave Low helicopter, the altitude of Mt Hood is about 11k feet and the guys were 800 ft below the summit, so I guess the 'copter was at 10k feet. Now I think the record for any helicopter at altitude is something near 20k feet but it wasn't a 4-person military 'copter either. There is a point where the 'copter can lose lift, downdrafts, wind changes, and I would imagine flying closer to the summit you might get interesting jetties and stuff from being close to the group (no??? I'm no pilot) but supposedly the jet lost lift (it kind of looks like one side of the 'copter sinks down before the pilot tries to compensate and then the rotors hit the snow and it tumbled).
There was supposedly a flight engineer on a tow line who cut the line once s/he knew the plane was having difficulties. probably saved their life and the rescued hiker in the process :tu
I wouldn't call the hikers stupid, probably misguided and overconfident. The stupid hikers would be wearing cotton clothes with no snow gear and talking on a cell phone, while doing the climb unroped.
Jay

 

[Henry Carmona]

There will always be people who will follow their own idea of "Thrill", and place other people in danger.

 

[Scott H]

A point of clarification...

This was neither a Black Hawk nor a Pave Low helicopter. It was a Pave Hawk. Weighs about 20,000 pounds, costs about $10 million dollars. It's climber rescue record is 14,400 feet on Mount McKinley. The service ceiling is about 19,000 feet.

 

[Jassen M. West]

Sorry I didn't mean to lessen the Somalia incident it was just so shocking to see it happening live. I truly apologize.

--jay