A helicopter pilot involved in fighting fires in California died yesterday (19th August) when the aircraft crashed near Coalinga, authorities said.
According to Federal Aviation Administration spokesperson Ian Gregory, the Bell UH-1 helicopter was helping to fight the Hills Fire when it crashed around 10 a.m., about 11 miles south of New Coalinga Municipal Airport, the Fresno Bee reported.
In a statement, Cal Fire said the helicopter crashed while it was on a water-dropping mission on the Hills Fire in western Fresno County. The blaze has been burning in the area since Saturday and has consumed 1,500 acres and is 35% contained, KGO reported. Winds of 26 mph have been clocked in the area, with gusts to 35 mph.
The impact of the helicopter crash ignited a new brush fire, Gregory told reporters.
The pilot, who was not identified, was the only person aboard the helicopter, according to Cal Fire officials.
“There was one person on board, they did not survive,” Cal Fire spokesman Daniel Berlant told the Los Angeles Times.
Fresno County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Tony Botti said the department’s search and rescue team assisted in the search for survivors, the Bee reported.
The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board will investigate, with the NTSB in charge of determining the probable cause of the crash, the newspaper reported.
According to fire officials, 50 structures have burned down in Vacaville, with another 50 damaged by the fire.
“We are experiencing fires the likes of which we haven’t seen in many, many years,” Governor Newsom told reporters.
The blazes are thought to have been sparked by a heatwave combined with nearly 11,000 lightning strikes which have hit the state over the last three days.
Earlier this week, one of the highest ever temperatures on Earth was recorded in California’s Death Valley. Across the US western states on Wednesday, nearly 45 million people were living in areas under some form of excessive heat warning or heat advisory.
Mr Newsom said 367 known fires have been recorded so far, but noted that “the prospect of that going up is very real”.
“As those lightning strikes spark, as you have a lot of smoke, you have a difficult time determining total number of fires until certain things clear and we have the opportunity to go to more remote parts of the state,” he added.
The group of fires in the San Francisco Bay Area was driven by winds throughout Tuesday night and has now grown to 46,000 uncontained acres.
The fire, which is larger than city of Washington DC, has injured four people and threatens about 2,000 buildings in Vacaville, authorities say.