LODDs: Medical helicopter crash victims identified

Four people were killed when a medical helicopter crashed during a short flight to a California hospital on Thursday, local fire officials said.

Valeri later confirmed it as the crash site of SkyLife H-4 and said the pilot, flight nurse, flight paramedic and patient had all died in the crash.

The patient was being taken to San Joaquin Community Hospital in Bakersfield, it said.

The thick fog and heavy rain at the time are at the forefront of the investigation, but federal authorities are still gathering data on that and other possible causes including mechanics and the pilot’s history, Joshua Cawthra of the National Transportation Board said at a briefing Friday.

The Fresno County EMS dispatch center immediately contacted both airport towers after a routine safety call to helicopter crew was not answered.

Dense fog also made search efforts more hard; crews couldn’t find the crash site for more than two hours, the AP also reported.

Ray Pruitt with the Kern County Sheriff’s Office said the only way to get to the crash site is on dirt roads.

“Hopefully at the end we’ll be able to say what happened, why it happened and ultimately prevent this type of accident from happening again”, Cawthra said.

The crew was identified by American Ambulance as Pilot Thomas Hampl, Nurse Marco Lopez, and Paramedic Kyle Juarez.

The names of the crew and the patient were not released Thursday night. Lynch oversees emergency medical services in Fresno, Madera, Kings and Tulare counties. This was the first fatal incident since the company was founded in 1991, they also said. The air ambulance transports about 1,000 patients a year, he said.

Medical flights have repeatedly drawn safety scrutiny, including a 1988 NTSB study that found a need for safety improvements.

The pilot… a flight nurse and paramedic… and a patient – were all killed when the copter went down traveling to a hospital in Bakersfield.

Antczak reported from Los Angeles.