Two Bell firefighting helicopters collided in mid-air on Sunday over the Psatha fire west of Athens, killing a Danish pilot and a Greek fire-service coordinator. [1][2] The second aircraft dumped its water load and got down. A British pilot and a second Greek coordinator survived with injuries.
Both machines had lifted from Elefsina military airbase and were working in formation when the lower rotor struck the underside of the aircraft above. [2] The stricken helicopter crashed and burned. Greek aviation investigators grounded Bell-type helicopters in the firefighting fleet pending inquiry. Other types stayed on the line.
The week already had three firefighter dead: two on Crete, one in the Peloponnese. Sunday made five. [1][3] Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said the loss at Porto Germeno filled the country with grief and that crews were working under weather that exceeded planning, especially for aircraft. [3] Nearly 500 firefighters and more than twenty aircraft were committed near the Attica-Boeotia border. Gusts kept some machines from drawing seawater.
Megara, a coastal town of tens of thousands, sat in the evacuation geometry. Kefalonia burned the same week. Halkidiki had fire near Nea Tenedos. [4] The collision was one sortie in a national scramble, not a single isolated pad.
The helicopters were leased. AeroTime identified the owner as McDermott Aviation, an Australian contractor. [4] Foreign pilots inside Greek fires are not an exception. They are how a small air force covers a peninsula that burns every August.
Psatha sits on the Attica-Boeotia edge, tens of kilometres northwest of Athens, in country that had already seen evacuations as Saturday's fires ran on wind. About 450 firefighters were committed across two zones on Sunday. [1] Porto Germeno's smoke is the backdrop in the bystander video that showed the pair close, then one falling. The second machine stayed airborne long enough to dump and leave the frame.
Names were not released. Nationalities were. A Greek coordinator and a Danish pilot dead. A Greek and a British crew member alive. [1] That mix is the leased-fleet model: Hellenic Fire Service command, foreign hands on the cyclic, Australian metal. Grounding the Bell types after the crash is the correct conservative move. It also thins the only tool that can reach a ridge when roads are already closed.
Crete and the Peloponnese earlier in the week were ground deaths. Sunday was air. The week's five are one service under one heat. Mitsotakis called the weather adverse for aerial assets. [3] Civil protection officials said turbulence and gusts blocked some seawater lifts. An aircraft that cannot fill still flies the pattern. An aircraft that flies the pattern in brown-out still shares a rotor disk with its wingman.
France and Spain burned in the same week. Europe's fire season is no longer a southern specialty. Greece's collision is the frame that shows the cost of stacking machines when the atmosphere itself is the hazard. The formation feature in this edition explains the geometry. This file records who paid it.
Mainstream files called it an accident beside a European heat story. The operational file is formation flying in smoke, wind, and repeated low passes. That is the risk the next article in this edition takes apart. Sunday only named the dead.
Unexploded ordnance in older fire grounds is the other Greek hazard this week, a reminder that the landscape stores last century's wars under this century's heat. Crews walk that ground after the helicopters leave. Sunday's dead never reached that walk. They died in the air that was supposed to spare the walkers.
Bystander video is already the public record the inquiry will have to outrun. It shows proximity, not a bird strike, not a single-engine failure on a solo drop. [1] Families of a Danish pilot and a Greek coordinator should not have to wait for a docket to know the pair were too close in smoke. The state can still owe them a mechanical answer. It cannot owe them a fiction that this was unlucky weather alone.
The investigation will take the time investigations take. The fire will not. Other airframes are already filling the gap the grounded Bells left. That is the cruel arithmetic of a season: you cancel a type to save the next crew and you ask the remaining types to fly more of the same pattern in the same wind.
-- DARA OSEI, London