2 Pilots Killed in Helicopter Crash While Fighting Yosemite Wildfire
Two helicopter pilots died on Sunday when their aircraft crashed while assisting wildfire-fighting efforts in Yosemite National Park, officials said.
One of the victims of the crash was Greg King, “a cherished member” of the Alaska Division of Forestry and Fire Protection, the agency wrote in a statement on Monday.
The identity of the second pilot has not been released. Helicopter company Precision employed both.
Benjamin Cossel, a spokesperson from the interagency team managing the Dome Fire, said the pilots were part of a team of helicopters using buckets to dump water on steep, high-elevation terrain that ground crews could not reach.
(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
“They’d been dipping out of Ostrander Lake and then coming back to kind of that northern edge of the fire,” he said. “And that is where they crashed.”
The Dome Fire, now more than 3,000 acres, started on Sept. 15 near Wawona, California and is just 15% contained.
While it has closed remote areas of the national park near Chilnualna Falls, all roads in the park are still open, and there have been no evacuations issued.
Precision wrote in an Instagram post on Sunday that it is mourning two of its employees.
“We are devastated by this loss and are struggling to find the words,” the company wrote.
The cause of the crash is under investigation by the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board.
The NTSB confirmed to KQED on Monday that investigators “will travel to the scene when fire conditions allow.”
Cossel said the firefighting efforts at the time were intense, with about 13 helicopters assigned to the area to assist with the difficult terrain and conditions.
After the pilots’ remains were recovered on Monday, they were driven in a procession through the town of Mariposa, Cossel said. He called the crash “heartbreaking.”
“This is wildland firefighting — we all know each other,” he said. “This is a member of our family, and we were all devastated when we heard this news. Everyone sort of gets that drop in the gut feeling.
“Our number one priority was getting our fellow firefighters, our fellow pilots, off of that ridge line and back home to their families, and treating them with the respect and the dignity that they deserved to get them back home,” he said.