Nine climbers fell into the 30-foot crevasse Thursday morning, about 800 feet from the summit of the 11,240-foot mountain. Three of them died before they could be rescued.
Six more people were injured when an Air Force Pave Hawk helicopter that was evacuating the injured from the crevasse crashed and rolled down the mountain slope.
The helicopter was about to pull a climber from the crevasse when it began to falter. A gurney on the ground that had been hooked up for the rescue was released as the pilot tried to maneuver, but the chopper's refueling probe apparently hit the side of the mountain, setting off a shocking chain of events that was caught on videotape.
"Suddenly the wind changed," said Dr. Steven Boyer, an emergency room doctor who was also climbing the mountain Thursday and who helped with the rescue effort when the crash occurred.
"I just glanced over my left shoulder in the gale of wind and saw they were losing power and I thought, 'Oh my God, they're going to crash.' And a second later they hit the deck on a slope of about 35 or 40 degrees, and rolled I would guess 10 or 12 times, almost into the crater itself," Boyer told ABCNEWS' Good Morning America today.
On the videotape, the helicopter could be seen wobbling, then the rotor blades hit the mountain and sliced off, and the rest of the chopper tumbled 1,000 feet down the mountain, over two paratroopers who were thrown from the aircraft.
"It's a miracle no one had major injuries," Boyer said.
Three of the six Air Force reservists on board were treated at a local hospital and released, with the rest of the crew in good to stable condition. All the surviving climbers were rescued by nightfall, and two of the dead had been recovered. A team returned to the site today and recovered the body of the last climber.
"We have now recovered all three of the bodies and are securing the site for an investigation by the military on the downed aircraft," said Kathleen Walker, who works at the Mount Hood National Forest.
She said the dead had been identified as William Ward, 49, and Richard Read, 48, both of Forest Grove, Ore., and John Biggs, 62, from Windsor, Calif.
Clackamas County Sheriff's Department Sgt. Nick Watt said the mountain, which is climbed by some 40,000 people a year — the world's second most popular mountain — will be closed to climbers above 8,700 feet until the investigation of the helicopter crash can be completed. That could take a couple of days, he said.
Helicopter Heroism
The incident Thursday could have been worse, but for the heroic efforts of the pilot and crew members of the helicopter, Watt said.
The pilot reacted quickly when he sensed something was going wrong, maneuvering the aircraft away from rescuers on the ground, he said. Watt also said the crew members who were trying to winch up a gurney carrying three rescuers and one of the injured from out of the crevasse saved those four lives by cutting the cable loose.
"The pilot actually backed up when the helicopter started acting up and went away from those people, because if he would have went down there we probably would have had more casualties than we had," Watt said. "In my opinion it was a heroic act by the pilot and the crew."
The Pave Hawk — a highly modified version of the Army Black Hawk, designed for high-altitude operations — was sent in at about 2 p.m. local time under what seemed like ideal rescue conditions: sunny skies and calm winds.
"It did go from bad to worse and we're here to help people and unfortunately the rescuers become the rescuees," said Angela Blanchard, spokeswoman for the Clackamas County Sheriff's Department.
"It was just surreal," said Cleve Joiner, who used his cell phone to call for help when he saw the climbers fall into the crevasse. "It was real silent once they all disappeared."
Joiner's 14-year-old son, Cole, who was among those rescued, said he had little recollection of the fall.
"It happened so quick that it was hard to think about what it was like. I just remember seeing climbers come down at me and then being in the hole," he said today on Good Morning America. "As soon as we got down there, we kind of figured it out just by what everyone's injuries were that they were pretty badly injured."
Boyer said he reached the scene about 20 minutes after the climbers fell, and there were already trained paramedics on the scene.
Training for War on Terror
The Air Force identified the crew of the helicopter as Capt. Grant E. Dysle, pilot; Capt. Kelvin B. Scribner, pilot; 2nd Lt. Ross S. Willson, combat rescue officer; Staff Sgt. Andrew V. Canfield, pararescue specialist; Staff Sgt. Darrin Shore, pararescue specialist; and Staff Sgt. Martin M. Mills, flight engineer. Dysle, Scribner and Willson were treated and released.
All are assigned to the 939th Rescue Wing, and were in training for assignment in the war on terror overseas, Pentagon officials said. Pave Hawks are most often used in combat rescue missions.
It's unclear what caused the accident, but the National Transportation Safety Board and military officials are investigating.
Thursday's accident came a day after three climbers were killed in a storm on Mount Rainier, about 100 miles to the north in Washington state.
The worst incident on Mount Hood occurred in 1986, when two teachers and seven teenage students froze to death when they were trying to descend out of a storm.
ABCNEWS' David Wright, Carla Wohl and ABCNEWS affiliate KATU contributed to this report. |
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