Two firefighters and a pilot who were killed Sunday after a midair collision between two helicopters fighting a brush fire in Riverside County were mourned on Monday.
As the Agence France-Presse noted at the time:
Three people died after two firefighting helicopters collided in the US state of California, causing one to crash into a hillside killing everyone on board, emergency officials said early Monday.
The helicopters were dispatched to fight a building fire that had spread to brush in Cabazon, a community some 85 miles (137 kilometers) east of Los Angeles, on Sunday evening when they collided in mid-air, Cal Fire Southern Region chief David Fulcher told reporters.
One helicopter was able to land safely nearby, with no injuries reported among the two people on board.
The Los Angeles Daily News reported on the details of the deceased:
Riverside County Assistant Chief Josh Bischof, 46, and Capt. Tim Rodriguez, 44, were aboard the Bell 407 helicopter along with a contract pilot, Tony Sousa, 55, above the Broadway fire about 6:45 p.m. when it collided with a Sikorsky S-64 helicopter, better known as a “Skycrane,” which had two people aboard.
The Bell crew, in a spotter helicopter, was guiding other helicopters at the scene. The much larger Skycrane, which drops water or retardant, landed safely. Both helicopters were under contract to work for Cal Fire and were housed at Hemet-Ryan Air Attack Base.
Former Cal Fire official Silvio Lanzas remembered his colleagues in an Instagram post:
View this post on Instagram
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is investigating the crash. Though crashes are rare, the increased danger to firefighters has been highlighted in recent years as more civilians have been flying drones near wildfires in California.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
