"parking" garage follies

[tugrik]

Getting to work this morning was interesting. The highway came to a stop right next to the office. Was there a wreck? Maintenance? Nope... it was a helicopter landing on top of my parking garage, right where I leave the Element each morning!



It turns out that the window washers got stuck on the side of our building. Their rig got jammed on the 9th floor and one of the cables got shredded. Nobody was hurt and they got down A-OK from the looks of it, but I won't know the whole story until the news shows it later tonight. There were camera crews all around the bottom of our building along with almost a dozen various emergency vehicles.

The helicopter took back off and the excitement ended while we were halfway through our 10a morning meeting. I got these cel-cam pics out of the meeting room window.

Edit: The local TV station and the newspaper both picked up the story.

Comments

[silverjames.livejournal.com]

Fox News just had a breaking news alert on this! Glad they got down safely.

[gafennec.livejournal.com]

LA Fire Department Huey? I'm glad nobody was hurt.

[tugrik.livejournal.com]

Naah, this is San Jose, CA. Nobody hurt at all. I suspect the local firefighters and rescue guys found this to be on heck of a cool equipment test. :) Everybody was wearing harnesses and safety gear, so it's all cool.

[gafennec.livejournal.com]

Yup. Still was a Huey though. :) Just looked like the LA colours.

[baloo-ursidae.livejournal.com]

I believe the colors of public helicopters are somewhat standardized to the same degree public vehicles tend to be.

[gafennec.livejournal.com]

It very well can be. I just know the LA County Fire Department Hueys look like that too.

[smokepaw.livejournal.com]

That is Copter 106, CalFire Alma Helitack, Santa Clara Ranger Unit. It is stationed at Alma Forest Fire Station in Los Gatos, most know this as the state fire station along side highway 17 on the shores of Lexington Reservoir.

They are Short-Haul qualified, essentially pulling people up on a suspended cable with a rescuer and victim on the end.

LA County has Bell 212 helicopters that are similar, but they have their differences. This is a state ship, CalFire (formerly known as CDF) has a fleet of them stationed all around the state. Bad-ass dudes. I know, because I work with them on a regular basis. I've flown in that ship several times as well.

Just thought you should know. ;)

[tugrik.livejournal.com]

You totally rock. :)

[smokepaw.livejournal.com]

Working for the state has its advantages. ;)

Interesting note. Even though the LA County ships are newer, the state ships are a whole hell of a lot more powerful. California's fleet is technically leased from the federal government, as these helicopters are all Vietnam-era gun ships. A such, they are still restricted aircraft. But when the state got them, they rebuilt them to their specifications. Larger jet-turbine engine, modern avionics, much stronger transmission, and most noticeably the tail rotor was turned around. Instead of pulling against the rotation of the main rotor, it now pushes. They gained a crap-ton of torque doing that!

Even more interesting note, if the pilot pulls up on the collective too much, the engine is powerful enough to actually twist the main rotor shaft right off the ship and crumple the tail boom. Needless to say, the pilots are well trained to -never- do that!

[oygevalte.livejournal.com]

Interesting stuff, because the military is STILL retrofitting and keeping flying some of the UH-1s, and the USMC mods are very, very similar to the ones that CAL FIRE had done to theirs. Chicken or egg, on that one, I do wonder... And I suspect that CAL FIRE may well be the chicken in that, and the USMC Hueys are taking full advantage of someone else prototyping it and working the bugs out for them. :)

On a side note, it's sort of scary in some sense how much of our military air power is based on what qualify as really aging airframes. Sure, they work hard at catching corrosion and structural issues before they turn into fatalities, but they're already had several deaths this year from things they could have caught but didn't. I'm just glad as hell that the Hueys were so damned overbuilt in the first place, as they never would have withstood so much in 'Nam if they were going to start dropping from the skies in droves because of hard-to-catch aging-related structural issues...

[gafennec.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the information! It is very interesting.

[zefel.livejournal.com]

I heard about that on KGO! I didn't know that was your bldg