Log-Toting Helicopter Crashes West Side Pilot Critically Injured

A helicopter crashed into a mountainside Monday afternoon, leaving the pilot in critical condition and shutting down a logging operation in the Fernan Ranger District.

Pilot Jay Worman of Yelm, Wash., was in Kootenai Medical Center’s intensive care unit Monday evening.

East of Coeur d’Alene, his battered helicopter lay on its side in the middle of a logging road. Its windshield was shattered. Its rotor blades were bent, broken and tangled in the trees. The aircraft’s tail sat in brush up the hill.

A malfunction in the tail section apparently caused Worman to spin out of control, said Kootenai County Sheriff’s Sgt. Dan Soumas.

Worman works for Northwest Helicopters of Olympia, which owns the Bell model 205 helicopter he was flying. Wescor Forest Products leased the helicopter and the pilot’s services.

The helicopter was moved into the Coeur d’Alene area this weekend to begin ferrying out timber on the Alder Creek timber sale, said Larry Endsley, operations manager for Wescor’s Spokane area office.

On Monday, Worman was flying logs from where they were cut to a loading area a mile and a half away, said Dan Medina, a Wescor project manager. He praised Worman’s abilities as a pilot.

Worman had been flying for about four hours, making 25 trips back and forth during each hour, Medina said.

The helicopter was checked thoroughly each time it stopped for fuel, he said. Neither the mechanic nor the pilot mentioned any problems, Medina said.

Then at about 11:40, a mechanic - one of 10 or so people on the ground - noticed that the hovering helicopter didn’t look right. The tail rotor appeared to stop working, Soumas said.

“They just turned and ran because they knew something was wrong,” Soumas said. A helicopter is uncontrollable without the tail rotor.

“The witnesses said he just started spinning around in circles,” Soumas said.

The helicopter sheered off at least one tree on its way down, leaving slash marks on another tree trunk. The tail section snapped off. The aircraft eventually crashed and flipped onto its side, Soumas said.

Loggers pulled Worman from the wreckage.

He was conscious and alert, Forest Service officials said, but potentially had spinal cord and chest injuries.

Worman was wearing a helmet.

Northwest Helicopters “is a good operator,” said Mitch Barker, spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration. “They have had accidents but they’re in a high-risk business.”

A list of those accidents wasn’t immediately available. Still, Northwest Helicopters is “very compliant, they have excellent maintenance and they are a well-run company,” Barker said.

The helicopter will carry about 4,000 pounds of timber, Endsley said.

“When you’re logging you’re maxing out your helicopter every turn,” Medina said.

“If things break,” Endsley said, “you are not in a good position to pull over to the side of the road and fix it.”

This is the second aircraft accident involving the timber industry in two weeks.

Ken Kohli and Seth Diamond, who were employees of the Intermountain Forest Industry Association, were killed July 26 when their small plane crashed into the west slope of the Cabinet Mountains near Troy, Mont. Pilot Al Hall, of Hayden Lake also was killed in that crash.

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