HOSPITAL HELICOPTER LANDS ON BROADWAY

Investigators from the Federal Aviation Administration are expected to be in Cape Girardeau today to find out what caused a helicopter accident at Southeast Missouri Hospital on Tuesday.

Officials at the hospital said a battery cable may have been connected to the nose of the helicopter as it attempted to take off. It went down on nearby Broadway.

"Almost any accident you can trace back to a human factor somewhere," said Dick Wright, director of safety and flight operations for Helicopter Association International based in Virginia.

No injuries were reported.

The helicopter, owned by St. Louis Helicopter Airways Inc., had lifted off to respond to a call in Poplar Bluff at 11:36 a.m. The person in Poplar Bluff was later transported by Air Evac.

Wires were pulling the helicopter back as it took off, said Sharon Anderson, who was stopped at the traffic signal on Broadway at Perryville Road when the accident occurred.

"You don't see a helicopter or plane take off that much around here, so I was pointing it out to my son," said Anderson, who lives in Cape Girardeau.

No cars were coming in either direction on Broadway as the helicopter came to a halt.

"The chances of no cars being on that part of Broadway at that time of day are pretty unlikely," Anderson said. "Everyone was very fortunate."

Linda Fisher was playing with her grandson in Capaha Park when they saw the helicopter struggling to take off.

"My grandson first noticed it taking off," said Fisher of Cape Girardeau. "It seemed like it stopped in midair. Then all of a sudden it just jumped and was shaking hard as soon as it cleared the roof."

It came down from the roof and touched down briefly on the grassy hill between the hospital driveway and Broadway before landing on the street, facing Capaha Park, Fisher said.

"The pilot did a good job," she said.

The pilot, Andy Schmidt, was accompanied by two flight nurses, Nancy Johnson and Karen Moore.

Schmidt has been flying helicopters since the early 1980s, when he served in the military, said Jack Russell, president of St. Louis Helicopter Airways.

The tail section of the helicopter was bent sharply to one side, exposing the inside of the tail. A chunk of the tail rotor was missing.

The helicopter damaged part of the hospital's roof as it tried to take off, left a barely noticeable dent in the grass and knocked two blocks from the concrete retaining wall next to Broadway.

The helicopter, a Bell Long Ranger, was being used by Southeast Hospital while the regular LifeBeat aircraft the hospital owns was undergoing routine safety and maintenance checks in St. Louis, the hospital reported.

St. Louis Helicopter Airways has provided all pilots and maintenance for LifeBeat's emergency airlifts, Russell said.

The only other LifeBeat accident occurred in 1995, when a pilot, paramedic and nurse survived an early morning crash near the Mississippi River in Illinois.

The battery cable, or auxiliary power unit, is used nearly every time a helicopter takes off, Russell said. The battery is connected by a cable to the helicopter's nose and reduces the amount of energy consumed during takeoffs.

Nearly two-thirds of helicopter accidents in the past five years are directly attributable to pilot mistakes, Wright said. However, a few are from poor pre-flight planning, he said.

Wright, who spent 25 years as a helicopter pilot with the Marines and Coast Guard, said he has rushed out onto the tarmac countless times to fly rescue missions, but he never flew off without making safety checks.

"Any professional pilot is going to inspect that aircraft from top to bottom and nose to tail before he takes off," Wright said. "Ultimately he's responsible for more than just his own life."