A medical helicopter trying to save a man’s life crashed
Sunday in Texas,
killing all four people aboard.
The helicopter belonging to PHI Air Medical, a Lafayette, La.-based company, was rushing 58-year-old
patient David Disman from a hospital in Huntsville
to one in Houston
for surgery. Unfortunately, two minutes after the helicopter took off from Huntsville Memorial
Hospital (2:45 a.m.), the connection
with it was lost and after six hours it was found in the dense Sam Houston
National Forest, on a private ranch whose owner wasn’t at home at the time of
the crash.
State Trooper John Sampa told the Houston Chronicle that the
crash made the helicopter, a Bell
407, disintegrate. “It took down a couple of pine trees.”
The other three people aboard were identified as pilot Wayne
Kirby, 63, of Bryan, paramedic Stephanie Waters, 27, of Cedar Park and nurse
Jana Bishop of Magnolia who would have turned 29 years on Monday if she had
survived the accident. Their bodies were taken for autopsies.
The accident was a “devastating loss” PHI Air Medical’s
representative Jonathan Collier said. He further added that the team had had a
successful mission several hours before the crash when helping save a
2-year-old child pulled from a swimming pool.
Officials from the national Transportation Safety Board and
the Federal Aviation Administration are investigating the cause of the accident,
which seemed awkward, since the weather was fine and there was no apparent distress
call.
Moreover, pilot Kirby had 30 years’ experience within PHI,
including flights in Antarctica and Africa. Bishop
had been with the company for three year while Walters for two.
This is a second accident involving a medical helicopter in two
weeks. On May 29, a medical helicopter crashed on the roof of the 11-story Spectrum Health Butterworth
Hospital, busting into
flames. Fortunately, the two people aboard managed to escape before the
helicopter burst on fire.
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