News Helicopters Collide While Filming Police Chase

Jeez, spup. Hope all of them are well. Terrible news.

 

One is a producer in the mornings. She's probably OK. The other is a reporter and I don't know that they had any reporters up in the 'copters.

 

KNXV reporter Craig Smith has perished.

While I don't know anyone involved in this tragedy, my sympathy to the families and friends of the three individuals.

 

Can I say as a news consumer that I don't need more useless fucking police chase aerial footage so much that anyone should have to die to bring it to me? I know it's good video. But it's utterly meaningless 99 percent of the time, and it's dangerous to people on the ground and, now, to people in the air as well.

 

Four confirmed dead: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0727coptercrash27-ON.html

 

The azcentral story says the man who was leading the police on the chase might be held liable for the deaths.
I really hope that doesn't happen. The choppers were not forced to go up to cover it.

 

That's stretching the law a tad.

 

According to the AZCentral story, these are the four who died:

Channel 15, the local ABC affiliate, reported that pilot Craig Smith and photographer Rick Krolak were on board.

Channel 3 reported that pilot Scott Bowerbank and photographer Jim Cox were on their aircraft.


Also, the video linked to the story is pretty interesting. It is from the other news copter that didn't crash and the reporter is obviously emotional while reporting what he is seeing.

 

The only thing surprising about this is that it didn't happen in southern California.

 

The footage (sound) from the pilot who was not involved was incredibly gripping. You could hear his words stop making sense as he realized what had happened.

 

On submarines during exercises, we were given horizontal slices of the water we could occupy (one boat between 300 and 500 feet, the other at 600 to 800 feet). Airplanes in normal traffic patterns do the same with east-west, north-south directions divided in odd and even altitudes (one way at 27k, 29k; the other at 28k; 30k). Don't know if that's feasible for these types of situations because of video requirements, but I'd consider trying to reach an interstation agreements to do so.

Edit: They might consider going to a pool during situations where all stations want the same thing shot. That's infinitely safer and one overhead's probably the same as the other, although you don't get your reporter's voice on it.

 

Well, the police chopper is enough.
Two is unsafe and a risk.
I can't even imagine LA when you end up with 6 or 7.