HOSPITAL HELICOPTER CRASH KILLS THREE IN EARLY-MORNING HOURS (10 YEARS AGO)

Thursday, Dec. 22, 1988; page 1

Reprinted from the Southeast Missourian

Three people were killed today when a St. Francis Medical Center Air Evac helicopter, transporting a youth who had been injured in an automobile accident, crashed and burned in a fog-shrouded field southwest of Cape Girardeau.

Dead are James Rhodes, 7, son of Sandra Wilson of Marion, Ill.; flight nurse Karen Scherer, 22, of Anna, Ill.; and respiratory therapist, Julie Huttegger, 22, of Cape Girardeau, daughter of Eugene and Marilyn Hutteger of Cape Girardeau.

Only the pilot survived. Sheldon Rudzek, 39, of Cape Girardeau, remained in critical condition today at St. Francis Medical Center with second- and third-degree burns over his legs and abdomen.

Rudzek suffered a fractured leg and was being examined for possible internal injuries.

A hospital spokesman said they were optimistic about his chances of recovery and his vital signs were stable.

A two-man team of aviation safety inspectors with the Federal Aviation Agency's Flight Standard's Office at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport arrived at the scene of the crash about an hour and a half after the crash was discovered to begin an investigation.

A FAA spokesman declined to speculate on the cause.

The helicopter went down near Cape County Road 219 approximately three to four miles west-southwest of the Cape Girardeau Municipal Airport near the Cape-Scott county line. It is about mid-way between Blomeyer and Interstate 55, just south of the diversion channel.

The helicopter was a Bell "Long Ranger."

According to Tom Frobase, lead flight nurse with the Air Evac team, the helicopter was en route from Marion, Ill., to the medical center with the boy aboard.

Capt. Ken McDowell of the Sikeston Bootheel Civil Air Patrol Composite Squadron said he was notified of the missing helicopter at 5:30 a.m. when he received a call from the U.S. Air Force Search and Rescue Center at Scott Air Force Base, Ill.

"We were notified that at 4:25 a.m. the pilot of a helicopter had reported he was five minutes out from the St. Francis Medical Center en route from the Cape Girardeau airport."

McDowell said the last radio contact with the helicopter pilot was at 4:29 a.m. when the pilot said he was instituting a "missed approach" to the St. Francis Medical Center, and was returning to the airport to shoot a second approach.

At 4:40 a.m. McDowell said a Union Electric and United Parcel employee both heard the helicopter fly over their locations near the Union Electric viaduct court distribution center.

McDowell explained the pilot was probably using a radial (radio beam) off the Cape Girardeau Very High-frequency Omni-range (VOR) transmitter at the airport to guide him in from Marion to the airport.

At that point, McDowell said, the pilot would have picked up the proper radial that would have guided him north from the VOR to the medical center landing pad.

McDowell said the pilot apparently missed the hospital in the dense fog and decided to return to the VOR for another approach.

"My speculation is he shot an ILS (Instrument Landing System) approach to Runway 10, but could not see the runway in the fog," McDowell said.

"At that point, however, he probably had ground contact, and being familiar with the flat terrain around the airport, was going to circle back around and head back to the ILS approach."

McDowell theorized the helicopter probably continued on near the ground until the pilot saw the power lines ahead and tried to dive under the two utility lines.

McDowell noted the first impact was about 10 to 15 feet west of Cape County Road 219, where the right skid of the helicopter struck the ground after its rotor head struck a power line.

A short distance away, the impact of the helicopter's large rotor blade could bee seen in the soft ground.

The crash occurred on the Beatrice Glaus farm.

She said she was awakened about 4:30 a.m. by what she later learned was the sound of the helicopter. Her house on the west side of County road 219 is near where the craft went down.

"I knew something bad happened," she said. "I jumped out of bed and looked outside, but I couldn't see a thing because of the fog.

"It was so loud that I thought it was coming down on the house," she said.

She said, because she could not see anything from her house she assumed the noise she heard was that of a low-flying aircraft on approach to the airport. She said she therefore did not notify anyone.

"We live close to the airport and we're used to hearing planes coming in and taking off," she said.

Her son, Lary Glaus, who farms his mother's land, discovered the wreckage about 7:20 a.m. He said his sister, Deborah Fraser, who lives nearby, told him she thought she had seen something in the field when she left her residence earlier.

Lary Glaus's wife Dorothy, said her husband and their son, Keith, first searched the area in the dense fog, but found nothing. She said their son left for work, and she and her husband went back out to continue the search.

Lary Glaus said: "When we went back out, we saw the wreckage. It looked like it had been blown all to pieces."

The couple returned to the house and called an emergency number for help and went back to the scene of the crash.

Glaus said he found the pilot lying about 15 or 20 feet from what might have been the cockpit of the craft. But because the wreckage was strewn over such a large area and the fog was so dense, Glaus said it was difficult to recognize parts of the helicopter.

"It didn't even look like a helicopter," he said.

"When I found the pilot, he was hurt, but he was talking," Glaus related. "I asked him how many people were on board and he told me there were three besides himself.'

Glaus then began a frantic search for the passengers, whose bodies he found.

Glaus said he returned to the pilot who told him his leg was hurt and his arm was numb. The farmer put his coat beneath the pilot's head and his wife's coat over his leg.

Ambulances soon arrived Glaus said, and there wasn't time to discuss what had happened.

He said it was apparent there was a fire, but only what appeared to be a piece of blanket was smoldering when he found the wreckage.

He said the lower line of two power lines was down and it looked like the helicopter had struck the line. Glaus speculated that caused the crash.

Trooper Lee Ann Horn of the Missouri Highway Patrol was among the first of the authorities to arrive.

The body of the two crew members were located about 20 to 50 feet east of the wreckage, while the body of the child was located near the aircraft, she said.

McDowell said the helicopter had an emergency location transmitter on board, but it was apparently destroyed by fire.

Had the ELT been operating, it would have gone off on impact and transmitted a signal to searchers, he said.

Neal Sowers and Tim Moon, aviation safety inspectors with the FAA Flight Standards Office in St. Louis arrived at the scene about 8:30.

Sowers said they had been staying at a Sikeston motel on other FAA-related business when they heard about the crash.

Sowers said an investigator from the National Transportation Safety board was also en route to the crash site.