Experts Losing Hope Of Finding Copter
Marine salvage experts are losing hope of finding the wreckage of a medical-evacuation helicopter that crashed in Puget Sound nearly a month ago.
The bodies of Airlift Northwest flight nurses Marna Fleetwood and Amy Riebe were recovered shortly after the Sept. 11 crash. But the body of pilot Lee Bothwell, 42, of Puyallup, Wash., has never been found and is presumed to be inside the remnants of the chopper.
On Sept. 28, a Navy vessel designed to recover torpedoes spotted a portion of the tail section in about 675 feet of water off Bainbridge Island.
But when Gordon Trifts of Deep Water Recovery Services sent a submersible camera down to the site Sunday, the tail section was gone.
“There’s nothing there now,” a frustrated Trifts said as he sat aboard his boat at the console controlling the camera. He pointed to a video monitor showing debris floating by at a fast pace. With the current moving at more than 4 knots, “we think it’s just rolling away like tumbleweed.
“Once the Navy located the target, by the time we set up on the site, it was gone,” he said.
A National Transportation Safety Board investigator has said the cause of the crash can’t be determined without examining the wreckage. xxxx