This is awful.
It was just on the local NBC station at 6:30 pm PST, it was a civilian owned C-130 firefighter tanker that crashed.  It was caught on amateur video.  The wings were gone and it was on fire as it hit the ground.
Here is a link to the story and a picture of it as the wings broke off.
May God have mercy on their souls and may they rest in eternal peace.
[url]http://www.kolotv.com/[/url]
[img]http://www.kolotv.com/images/main/tanker_crash_big_061702.jpg[/img]
[url]http://www.kolotv.com/index.php?link=readmore&sid=2359[/url]

btt

OK... as I understand it :
If you rob a bank and people are hurt while the police/swat are trying to [s]kill[/s] er... capture you.. YOU will be charged with the innocente persons death ... right?  


So .... my question is ...:
Will the Forest Service worker be charged with the crews death, since they were fighting a fire she started..?

also...

DAMN live TV....

I feel for the family that will see the last moments of thier loved ones life..

Cluster,

You have the wrong state, this crash was in CA, outside Yosemite National Park.

It was the fire southwest of Denver, CO that was started by the Forest Service worker.

And yes, if it was Arson, then the Arsonist will be charged with murder under California law.
If it was a accidental, they probably wont prosecute UNLESS they were doing something illegal, like not having manditory spark arrestors, or lighting a fire in a fire-banned zone.

RIP, At least they died doing what they loved.

Really? Your immortalized on video. You live forever! Most of us will probably die a slow, uneventful death. If ya gotta go, go with a bang.

OK.. thanks for the correction..

Just gotta add... that if I was charged with the CO fires..  they would find a way to connect the two..[:d]

An airtanker crashed last season in CA, the fire it was responding to was started by a meth lab.  The individual who was running the lab was caught and charged with manslaughter.

My condolences to the families of the victims of this latest incident.  

People say we are crazy to jump out of airplanes into trees and close to wildfire, but the real crazy heroes are the pilots of those tankers.  I am truly impressed every time I watch them drop.  It takes a tremendous amount of skill to fly a plane of that size in mountainous terrain, drop a payload that weighs about 25000 pounds, and do it all about 200 feet above the treetops.

If anyone hasn't seen it and wants to, [url]www.foxnews.com[/url] had video from one of their newscrews, not the amateur video, up on their website.  Apparently the plane had had some wing problems (cracking, etc) beforehand, which were supposedly repaired.  My $$ is on a A&P mechanic or two looking for new jobs in the near future.

I'll put my money on the structural failure of the spar due to excessive maneuvering (g-loads) and/or exceeding max gross weight.  It's an older plane with a history. Sad ending to a otherwise glorious aircraft and crew.

A couple of months back my dad (Who is an aerospace and structures engineer) was telling me about  a problem with the early c130's.  They had an anomaly that if an engine were to seize up in flight it would literally tear the wing off! They then restricted the airspeed of these airplanes and also did some beefing up of the structures in an effort to bandaid the situation.  This newest incident appears to be just that, the wing is literally ripped off the fusalage by a suddenly seized engine.  BTW I recorded the crash off the news and we replayed it in frame by frame and we could not see an obvious engine explosion or fire before the wing folded so it very well could have been a seizure.

just my take on the situation

The pilot of this aircraft was my Dad's good friend Steve Wass. He was a great pilot and as it is obvious this was not pilot error. They said on the news that the company (Hawkins and Powers) admitted to the aircraft having cracked wings 4 years ago. The guy that ferried it to their home base in WY knew it had cracked wings and helped do all the repairs including ultrasounds to make sure there was no further structure damage. They had just got done making a drop when this happened. The load coming off must have stressed the airframe too much. 3000 gallons of retardant at more than 8 pounds a gallon. If I remember right it is 11 pounds a gallon for the stuff I used to mix at the base in Ramona, CA but it has been awhile. That’s 33000 pounds coming off at once. Nothing new to the aircrafts military use when tanks and other cargo is pulled out the back by parachute. If I remember right I have heard allot about c-130's having too rigid of a wing and that it should have some flex to it so that all the stress is not all at one point where the wing meets the fuselage. My dad is also a tanker pilot. This summer he is flying out of Porterville, CA. It’s never good news to hear of one of these go down. I grew up around the air tanker industry and know allot of the pilots. When you turn on the news and see something like this happen, it’s horrible. Especially when it is something that the crew had no control of. Steve was just on the news the night before on a Reno TV channel, explaining his job and the status of the fire, standing by his aircraft in Minden, NV. Some of his last words of the interview were something like “You just get in there and do it and hope you get to go home at the end of the season.”

The fire last year that was started by the meth lab as mentioned above, “TWO” Air tankers crashed on and the starter was charged with manslaughter as Smokejumper said. That was Lars Stratte and Larry Groff.

I’ll always remember another one of my dads tanker pilot friends interview on a San Diego news station a few years back. They did a ½ hour special on tankers and the pilots when they had a big bust in SO Cal. He sat in the pilots seat in the cockpit of his tanker explaining how his father was a tanker pilot and how his mom never wanted that call to come, but one evening it did. He kinda chuckled and said, “Now my wife sits at home hopein that call will never come.” I know my mom is the same way. She got my dad to retire 3 years ago I think it was. He never went to CA that summer (We live in CO). But my brothers and I knew all too well. That next summer come, April he was on his way back to CA for his 1 week refresher course before fire season started. I have worked around hundreds of fire fighters and allot of tanker pilots and they’ll all tell you one thing. IT’S IN THE BLOOD!!!

It is very unfortunate that the families had to see that on TV. I don’t think you see any of HP’s A&P’s getting canned. Personally I think it is the airplane itself. There was a crash a few years back in Nor Cal that was a c-130, tanker 82 and almost the same thing happened to it. It’s Hard to say.

Diesel

It appears that both wings failed at the same time.

The right wing gave away first then as soon as it was starting to fold the other one gave away. In talking to my dad I guess once on gives way the other one is loaded with stress so fast that it just snaps like a twig. Below is a quote from a tanker pilot and ex air fore c-130a pilot.


[i]Before the C-130A models were excessed from the Air Force, there were under serious operational restrictions when I was flying them, because of the weak wings. Since the Air Force did not want to pay to have them re-skinned, it issued numerous flight restrictions, e.g. G load limitations, etc. So when the Forest Service picked them up, I was shocked to see them being used to replace older tankers, so to see them still flying after they lost a C-130A a couple of years ago, should make the community replace the fleet with P-3's which are much better in all aspects than C-130A's. The Forest Service simply has to get Congress to give them more money to either replace them, or reskin the wings properly. I'm sorry but how many more wonderful people do we have to lose before wisdom sets in? The tanker mission is already dangerous, so why compound things with unsafe airframes? I loved flying the C-130s but right now I would not care to be a crewmember on a C-130A it is that simple. It should be fairly easy for somebody to contact the Air Force or Lockheed and find that study that came out detailing the wing problems on the C-130A fleet, since it was this study that spawned the restrictions.[/i]

Diesel

Are you just talking about this specific aircraft, or about C-130s in general? All I know, is that planes don't fly well without wings. Those wings broke off like they were made of balsa.

I only live 45min from the town and airfield that the plane was from.  Greybull is only about 3000 people strong. I'm sure the video was hard to watch for the friends and family.  The H&P tankers are quite a sight taking off and landing so often in such a little town.  You always know when there is a fire near by, tankers landing and taking off every few minutes.  Pretty impressive.  You would be surprised at the size of the operation.  There are probably at least 20 working tankers plus probably 30-40 others that line the airstrip, not including the helicopters.  Pretty good size operation.  I have heard that they are the largest fire fighting tanker business west of the Mississippi?  They were down in Florida last year.  Seems like if there is a wildfire, they are working it.  My little boys love to drive by during the summer to see all the planes; lots of B-24's, B-25's, and C-130's.

Not all C-130's are like this one. There are several models. This one happens to be a A model.... C-130A. It's becoming more apparent that this model is notorious for having wing problems like this. That is why the Air Force retired this model and that is how these companies such as Hawkins & Powers, TBM Inc., Aero Union and other come by them.

Diesel