Fire Fighting Helicopter Crash in Hapcheon Dam

A fire fighting helicopter crashed during its test flight. Thanks to prompt decisions of its Polish pilot and Korean co-pilot, five of its passengers were saved. However the pilots fell in the lake and were lost. Due to late rescue efforts by the fire department which only began 16 hours after the incident, the department is under criticism.

▽Incident = On January 18th, 4 pm in Bongsan-myun, Hapchun-ghun of Gyeongnam Province, a fire fighting helicopter, ‘Dalgu-2’ of Daegu Fire Department Headquarters was testing its Auto Flight Control System. While hovering over the lake Hapcheon, suddenly the aircraft lost balance and was tilted to the right. And then, the rotor blades hit the water surface and the aircraft shook violently loosing its right door.

The co-pilot, Ryu Byung-wook (age 39, Fire Dept. Officer 7th Grade) shouted to stay calm and ordered five passengers in the rear compartment to jump into lake via broken off exit. After all passengers have jumped, co-pilot Ryu escaped with pilot Ruzeanski (age 50) who was holding on to the control till the last moment.

These seven men were holding on to the half sinking aircraft before it sank completely after two minutes. After that they began their desperate swim.

“The both pilots appeared to have lost their strength due to the shock of the helicopter crash, during the swim I looked back and saw the swimming together with us. When we reached the shore, both of them were nowhere to be seen,” said a survivor, mechanic Jang Sung-mo (age 40, Fire Dept. Officer 6th Grade).

The passengers of the helicopter were Ryu (age 39, co-pilot), Jang (age 40, mechanic), Michael Dickby (age 33, British, helicopter designer), Ruzeanski (age 50, Polish, pilot) of Swedenix Corp., Alec (age 42, mechanic), Swarbec (age 33, helicopter designer) and another Swarbec (age 31, flight instructor), totaled seven crew members.

▽Desperate survival efforts = The five survivors have swam about hundred meters from the crash site to a lake island. When the darkness set in, they had no choice but to withstand the night chill in fear.

The water soaked survivors huddled together for warmth and spend a cold sleepless night. In order to maintain their body warmth, they’ve collected tree leaves to cover up themselves.

On January 19th 0840hr, about 16hours after the crash, they were spotted by a rescue helicopter and were sent to hospital for treatments. Most of the survivors show severe symptoms of hyperthermia but there are no threats to their lives.

▽A late rescue = The communication loss of the helicopter was reported to the Daegu Fire Department HQ on January 18th 1815hr, about two hours after the incident.

On 1920hr and 1950hr, the HQ inquired to the SK Telecom and KTF in tracking down the GPS location of the passengers’ mobile phones. They were only able to track down the last known position by 2131hr, about two hours later. All the survivors’ mobile phones were disabled by the water.

The rescue experts say that the rescue effort could have been swifter if the mobile phone GPS track down was made earlier.

▽Cause of the incident = According to the a Fire Dept. official, “The crashed helicopter was recently equipped with Auto Flight Control System and this was their first test flight. This was the reason for Polish technician passengers.” Then he comments on the possibility of malfunction in the ‘AFCS’.

The crashed aircraft was a 47.1 billion won Polish made helicopter model type PZA-W3A (SOKOL) by Swednix Corp. The aircraft specifications are as follows, maximum range 737km, maximum speed 252km/h and total passengers of fourteen (including crews). The aircraft and crews were insured for 2.26 billion won.

cavatina@donga.com jrjung@donga.com