Five seconds from disaster

By CHERY SABOL

The Daily Inter Lake

ALERT helicopter pilot Addison Clark has plenty of paperwork to occupy him until he has a helicopter to fly again.

Clark is the pilot who managed to land Kalispell Regional Medical Center's treasured helicopter when its engine failed Thursday night. No one was hurt, although the aircraft is out of commission.

"The fact that the crew is upright and walking around … is testament to his talent," ALERT chief pilot George Taylor said.

Clark, paramedic Chuck Curry and nurse Megan Hamilton were flying to Bigfork to pick up a patient suffering from chest pains.

It was snowing and visibility for the 9 p.m. flight concerned Clark as he flew southeast from the helipad on Buffalo Hill.

"It didn't look like we would make it to Bigfork," Clark said Monday. He and Curry were making the decision to call off the flight when the green engine lights came on.

"I didn't think that was a huge problem," Clark said.

Curry said the indicator lights occasionally come on. Usually, it's caused by something as minor as fuzz or other material on a sensor, he said.

"It isn't, 'Oh my God, the engine's going to quit,'" he said.

But flight protocol is to land the helicopter immediately and that's what Clark was prepared to do.

"If we had been further south, I would have gone to [Kalispell City] airport."

He had been airborne for only about a minute, though, and decided the best option was to return to the helipad at the hospital.

Then the helicopter began voicing a calamitous problem.

"The engine started making a different sound," Clark said.

"It was growling, like a bearing" going out, Curry said. "It got worse and worse and worse."

The helicopter started surging, like a vehicle running out of fuel.

Clark was running out of time.

The helicopter was approaching the water tower when the situation became dire.

"Shortly after that, it exploded," Curry said.

About 150 feet in the air, Clark was piloting a helicopter with total engine failure. He had less than five seconds until the 4,000-pound aircraft and its three occupants would hit the ground.

Clark did what he learned to do during 12 years for flying for the Army and subsequent ALERT training.

He was too low to the ground to execute a perfect auto-rotation, but he did what he could.

Without engine power, uplifting air builds up the main rotor's revolutions, enough to give a pilot some control. The rotor system and flight controls still functioned and Clark was able to navigate toward the helipad, cruising over Brendan House and a crowded parking lot, threading his way through light poles.

Clark positioned the helicopter blades to slow his descent while he aimed at his target.

Still, the aircraft hit the ground at about 40 to 50 mph, Curry estimated.

The helicopter sideswiped a car in the parking lot and took out a length of chain-link fence. Marks are still visible in the sod where the helicopter skidded from a gravel perimeter around the helipad, through the grass and toward the concrete pad, where it stopped without overshooting the landing zone.

"That's a bad spot to lose an engine," Taylor said. "The pilot didn't have many options."

He had nothing but praise for Clark, 39, who was hired in March.

Clark came with military training that was reinforced by a school specifically designed for pilots of Bell helicopters. The hospital sends all of its pilots to the school in Fort Worth, Texas, which includes academics and flight maneuvers.

"They simulate engine failure," Clark said. Pilots go through touch-down maneuvers designed to refine pilots' skills in situations such as the one Clark faced Thursday.

He said the Bell 407 model used by ALERT has an impressive safety record, as does the ALERT program itself.

Taylor was busy on the phone Monday, trying to arrange a leased helicopter from North Dakota. He wants a model exactly like the crippled helicopter now sitting in the ALERT hangar.

The ALERT chopper has been probed and diagnosed like any patient inside the hospital itself. The Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the engine malfunction.

Taylor said the helicopter's rebuilt engine had about 70 hours' flight time on it. It has been maintained in compliance with all FAA regulations.

Clark is busy now, filling out paperwork on the crash.

The Flathead community as well as the emergency-services committee has responded with praise for Clark and sympathy for the damage to the helicopter.

Everyone involved, though, was grateful that deeper sympathies weren't needed after a crash that could have been tragic.

"I was pretty sore for a few days," Curry said.

"He did a hell of a job," Taylor said of Clark.

Reporter Chery Sabol may be reached at 758-4441 or by e-mail at csabol@dailyinterlake.com