Sacramento Area Local News

JUNCTION CITY (CBS13/AP) ― The FAA has confirmed that 9 people have died in the crash of a firefighting helicopter that went down in the Shasta-Trinity forest last night. Four others are hospitalized with critical to serious injuries.

The US Forest Service says a Sikorsky S-61 helicopter being used to combat the Buckhorn Fire, about 15 miles northwest of Junction City, crashed around 7:45 p.m. just north of the flames last night.

Four victims of the crash, one pilot and three contract firefighters, were first taken to Mercy Medical Center in Redding last night.  The pilot and two of the contract firefighters has since been transported to UC Davis Medical Center.

The pilot and one of the contract firefighters is listed in serious condition, the third firefighter is said to be in critical condition. The fourth victim, a contract firefighter, remains at Mercy Medical Center and is listed in serious condition, but is stable. 

The National Transportation Safety Board is now leading the investigation into the cause of the crash.

The Sikorsky S-61 helicopter is the only wildland firefighting helicopter in the nation equipped to simultaneously carry both water and crew. It can simultaneously carry up to 18 firefighters and drop up to 1,000 gallons of water via a suspended bucket.

Cal Fire uses the aircraft to provide initial attack support on fires throughout California and to support firefighting efforts nationwide.

The helicopter was owned and operated by Carson Helicopters Inc., whose firefighting operations are based in Grants Pass, Ore. All 12 of the company's helicopters are being used for firefighting in Oregon and California, said Bob Madden, Carson's director of corporate affairs.

Madden said the helicopter's two co-pilots were Carson employees -- one was hospitalized and the other was among the missing.

The firefighters had been working at the north end of a more than 27-square-mile fire burning in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, part of a larger complex of blazes that total 135 square miles. The complex was about 87 percent contained.

"We are praying for the swift recovery of all the victims, and our hearts go out to their loved ones," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Wednesday.

Ten of the firefighters, including the three in the hospital, were employed by firefighting contractor Grayback Forestry, according to Kelli Matthews, a spokesman for the Merlin, Ore.-based company. Grayback's tally showed that seven of its employees were unaccounted for late Wednesday, and the company does not know whether any firefighters from any other companies or government agencies also were on board, Matthews said.

She said the company was in the process of notifying families of the missing firefighters as well as fielding calls from anxious relatives asking whether their family members were among the injured or dead.

Mike Wheelock, Grayback's founder and owner, said the company had two 20-person crews working the fire, a mix of young seasonal firefighters and professionals.

"We are just right now concentrating on all the families and our employees," Wheelock said while visiting UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, where two of his injured employees were being treated. "We are very concerned about them because we are very tight-knit."

Grayback firefighters Michael Brown, 20, and Jonathan Frohreich, 18, as well as one of the two pilots, were being treated at the UC Davis hospital, according to the contractor. Brown was upgraded to fair condition late Wednesday and Frohreich remained in critical condition, according to the hospital and fire officials.

A medical center spokesman said the hospital also was treating a crash victim in critical condition named William Coultas, but could not confirm whether the patient was the helicopter's co-pilot.

Leora Frohreich, Jonathan Frohreich's grandmother, said this was the young man's first working as a wildland firefighter and that the experience had persuaded him to further his education. He planned to attend a mechanics school this fall. He had worked on a fire near Williams, Ore., for three weeks and then was on the Shasta-Trinity fire for four days, the grandmother said. His crew was being flown out for some rest when the helicopter crashed, she said.

"I'm so thankful because he's just lucky to be alive," Frohreich said, adding that the firefighter's parents, sister and girlfriend had gone to Sacramento to be with him. "You can't be in a crash like that and not hurt."

Another Grayback employee, identified as Richard Schroeder, 42, was in serious but stable condition at Mercy Medical Center in Redding, officials said.

The helicopter was owned and operated by Carson Helicopters Inc., a Pennsylvania company whose firefighting operations are based in Grants Pass, Ore. All 12 of the company's helicopters are being used for firefighting in Oregon and California, said Bob Madden, Carson's director of corporate affairs.

Madden said the helicopter's two co-pilots were Carson employees -- one was hospitalized and the other was among the missing. The company would not release their names until officials confirmed their identities and notified family members.

The Forest Service and the sheriff's department would not disclose Wednesday whether they had recovered the bodies of any victims from the crash site or what was involved in the search effort. The Trinity County coroner's office said it did not have any information to release.

Before Tuesday's helicopter crash, three firefighters were killed while on duty in California this year, including one firefighter also assigned to battle the Shasta-Trinity blazes who was killed late last month by a falling tree.

On July 2, a volunteer firefighter in Mendocino County died of heart attack on the fire line. Another firefighter from Washington state was killed July 26 in Siskiyou County when he was burned while scouting a fire.

Meanwhile, fire crews were busy containing a series of small fires sparked by an electrical storm that generated an estimated 2,000 lightning strikes in northern California, southern Oregon and western Nevada on Tuesday and Wednesday, said Basil Newmerzhycky, a Forest Service meteorologist in Redding.

The lightning storm set off at least a "few dozen" small fires across the region, none of which had grown into major blazes so far, Newmerzhycky said. By contrast, a massive lightning storm on June 21 generated about 8,000 strikes that sparked more 2,000 fires that became the largest fire event in California history.

The storm stoked a complex of blazes in rural Butte County more than doubled in size to 4 square miles on Tuesday after firefighters were forced to briefly retreat from unpredictable winds unleashed by passing thunderclouds, state fire officials said. That fire was about 50 percent contained and threatened about 75 homes Wednesday.

A wildfire outside Yosemite National Park that was started July 25 by a person taking target shooting practice was completely contained by Wednesday morning, after destroying 30 homes and consuming about 53 square miles in Mariposa County. Officials revised their count of homes destroyed again -- up from 28 -- after surveying the damage.

Schwarzenegger also declared a state of emergency in Humboldt County on Wednesday because of the unhealthy air quality caused by fires there. It's one of 13 county emergency declarations the governor has declared this year due to the blazes.

(© 2010 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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