Helicopter crash probe could take months
• Were lights working?: Four dead as chopper clips radio tower cable
AURORA -- As a forklift hoisted the Air Angels helicopter's battered and splintered rotor blade onto a flatbed truck Thursday afternoon, Zachary Robinson handed a small piece of metal and fiberglass to an Aurora police officer.
Hours earlier, 22-year-old Robinson had stepped outside his building at the Amli apartment complex near Eola Road and Liberty Street to see debris raining down after the medical transport chopper carrying three crew members and a child clipped a radio tower guy wire and crashed into a fiery heap late Wednesday night.
The victims killed in the crash were identified as Air Angels pilot Del Waugh, 69, of Carmel, Ind.; nurse William Mann, 31, of Chicago; medic Ronald Battiato, 41, of Peotone; and the baby, 14-month-old Kirstin Blockinger of Leland.
National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration officials quickly descended on the scene, where debris covered a 100-yard area of a field.
The main rotor came to rest just feet from Eola Road -- prompting many rush-hour motorists to slow as they passed it -- but larger pieces of wreckage landed farther northeast in a field of tall weeds in the Night Heron Marsh Forest Preserve.
"I can't speculate on a cause; certainly we do have evidence it struck a guy wire on the tower," NTSB investigator John Brannen said, noting the probe will consider mechanics, the pilot and several other factors.
The investigation will take several months, he added.
The Bell-222 helicopter, based out of Clow Airport in Bolingbrook, was about 50 feet below the top of the 734-foot-high tower used by WBIG-AM radio when it sliced through the wire. Air Angels' Director of Business Development Mike Dermont said those circumstances make the incident "an odd event."
"The facts coming in, it just doesn't add up," he said. "This is not like any of my past experience."
He said helicopters can fly that low, but "it really depends on the mission."
Investigators would not speculate on why the aircraft was at that height, whether it had mechanical trouble or if it was in distress during its trip from Valley West Community Hospital in Sandwich to Chicago's Children's Memorial Hospital.
"A rotor blade is not designed to go through anything but air," Brannen explained. "A lot of the material we found in the (apartment) complex appears to be from the main rotor."
The two-foot piece that landed in the back of Robinson's truck showed markings similar to the heavily damaged rotor that landed on the east side of Eola Road, across from the apartments. The wreckage collected was to be taken to a hangar at Poplar Grove airport for further investigation, Brannen said.
Concerns about the radio tower's stability prompted Aurora police to call for a voluntary evacuation of homes and apartments within 1,000 feet. A statement issued Thursday by WBIG President Rick Jakle said engineers would work to stabilize the tower by the end of the day, but Aurora police said later that repairs were expected to begin this morning. Jakle did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Witnesses, including Robinson, said they did not see the lights used to illuminate the massive tower before the crash. Brannen told reporters the issue of whether the tower's lights were on is one of the several things investigators have to sort out.
"I cannot answer whether or not they were on at the time of the accident. I can say that when I was out here last night after the accident, the lights on the tower were not on," Brannen said.
In Jakle's statement, he said, "The strobe lighting system on the tower was observed to be operating last night by the general manager around 7 p.m."
Robinson, who has lived at Amli for six months, did not notice the lights on when he arrived home between 7 and 8 p.m. Wednesday.
"Usually that tower is pretty lit up at night," he said.
According to FAA and FCC rules, operators of radio towers, such as the one involved in Wednesday's crash, are required to file daily -- electronically or otherwise -- reports on the working condition of their light systems, FAA spokesman Elizabeth Isham Cory said. Failure to report a problem in a timely manner could mean an FCC license suspension.
"There were no issues with the lights that we were aware of," she said of WBIG's lights, noting a disruption was reported after the crash.
