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Helicopter Crash Injures Pilot, Tollway Employees

August 19, 2005

A helicopter crash injured an Illinois Department of Transportation pilot and three Illinois tollway employees. The pilot, Ron Taylor, 57, remains in Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn. An official said he had a spinal cord injury and needed surgery. One tollway employee, Roberto Rivera, 53, an equal employment opportunity program manager, also remained hospitalized, a medical center spokeswoman said.

Taylor, who served in the Army, worked for the Illinois National Guard and has logged more than 10,000 hours of flight time. He declined to discuss what happened before the Bell Long Ranger helicopter crashed near the 82nd Street Plaza on the Tri-State Tollway (Interstate Highway 294) near southwest suburban Justice. But he was thankful for the comments people have made about him. Several have commended Taylor for apparently trying to crash-land the aircraft in a place that would minimize the impact on people on the ground. "I appreciate all the good words and concern," he said.

The passengers were on a routine flight to monitor and photograph construction and resulting traffic along I-294. Such flights usually happen every two weeks. Taylor began the flight in Springfield, where IDOT keeps its aircraft, and flew north to Downers Grove, where he picked up the tollway employees at agency headquarters. Bill Ponall, 58, a tollway multimedia projects specialist, was on board to film construction sites, said Joelle McGinnis, an agency spokeswoman. The other employees, Rivera and Michele Gamble, 37, a minority and women-owned business enterprise manager, rode along to familiarize themselves with construction projects on the Tri-State, North-South and Ronald Reagan Memorial Tollways, McGinnis said.

The flight was supposed to last four hours, but something went wrong within the first 60 minutes. Around 10:15 a.m., the helicopter was seen swerving over the southbound lanes of the Tri-State near the 82nd Street Plaza before drifting over the northbound lanes. It struck a wooden sound barrier and overturned, landing between the sound wall and the guardrails. No one on the ground was injured, authorities said.

One eyewitness, Jesse Sturdevant, had picked up a truck full of cement and was heading to Batavia when he noticed the helicopter fishtailing above the southbound lanes of the Tri-State Tollway. "My first impression was it was somebody hot-dogging it," said Sturdevant, who was driving a semi-tractor trailer north about 10:15 a.m. on Interstate Highway 294 just past the 83rd Street Toll Plaza near southwest suburban Justice. "And then I thought, `This guy is too low.'"

Within seconds and less than half a mile north, the Illinois Department of Transportation's helicopter drifted over the northbound lanes and spun around before hitting a wood sound barrier. At least one blade ricocheted across the highway and struck the median barrier, and the helicopter flipped on its side and landed between the sound wall and the guardrails at the edge of the highway, just north of the 82nd Street Toll Plaza.

Sturdevant, who stopped his truck in a middle lane to avoid being hit, said he jumped out and rushed over to the aircraft, along with other motorists who stopped. "Everyone's yelling, `It's going to blow up,'" Sturdevant recalled hours later. "There was fuel leaking out of the bottom. I'm just yelling, `Let's get these people out of there then.'" The motorists helped the three passengers out of the aircraft.

Eric Berlin of Chicago, who was heading south on the Tri-State en route to a sales call in Oak Lawn, spotted the helicopter swerving in the air about 200 feet above him. "I thought they were going to come down on my car and hit me," said Berlin, who slowed down and then sped up, trying to dodge the aircraft. The helicopter was making a "bumbling sound" that was loud enough to prompt Eric Nikliborc of Lockport to peer outside at Ability Plastics Inc., just west of the Tri-State in Justice. "It just didn't look right at all," said Nikliborc, a graphic artist for the company.

Sturdevant believes the pilot was trying to land in the southbound lanes but realized there was too much traffic. "Everyone is coming into the tollbooth so it's real wide right there," said the Yorkville resident. "His back end was swinging from side to side and he gained a couple of feet in altitude and drifted over to the east side, and by then he was swinging in a circle. I'm sure he did the best job he could do. I mean, they are all lucky."

Nikliborc said the pilot appeared to be struggling to keep the aircraft airborne before it struck the sound wall and flipped on its side. "Rotors snapped and there was debris everywhere," said Nikliborc, who dialed 911. "I was waiting for an explosion. I don't know why it didn't explode. "Everybody right away tried to start helping out. I saw a couple of people get pulled out."

Sturdevant said he tried to figure out how to shut off the engine because the rotor was still spinning, though the blades were just stubs. "I couldn't see a master switch," he said. When the pilot didn't answer him, Sturdevant focused on getting him out of the aircraft and away from the helicopter.

While emergency units doused the wreckage with foam, tollway officials shut down the northbound lanes for less than an hour, opening some lanes so traffic could pass. By 2:45 p.m. all lanes were reopened, agency spokeswoman Joelle McGinnis said.

The tollway authority sold its helicopter last year after Jack Hartman, the agency's executive director, decided it was a symbol of excess and it made more financial sense to charter one. Since then, the agency has chartered private aircraft or IDOT helicopters. IDOT spokesman Matt Vanover said his department charges $84 per passenger per hour. The aircraft passed an annual inspection in May and last received maintenance July 20, Vanover said. Hartman said the agency would continue to use helicopters, adding, "It's still a safe form of transportation."

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the cause of the accident. Agency spokesman Terry Williams said officials had interviewed three of the helicopter's occupants so far and would look at the maintenance logs and pilot's records. The wreckage was moved to a storage facility, and the NTSB hopes to examine it within the next week, said John Brannen, a senior air safety investigator for the agency. The NTSB must coordinate with a representative from the helicopter manufacturer, which typically assists in the examination, he explained. Standard procedure calls for the investigation to look at the pilot's actions, the aircraft and the weather. A preliminary report should be issued within a week, Brannen said. "At this point, we have moved the wreckage and I have talked to three of the occupants of the helicopter," he said. "I'm sure we will be talking to them some more later on."

Rivera and Gamble are both involved in efforts to diversify the construction workforce and encourage participation of minority and women-owned business on tollway contracts, McGinnis said. "They went up to get an overview of the construction projects systemwide," McGinnis said. "Because of the size of the tollway system and the number of active construction areas, it's difficult to travel in a car in a timely manner to visit the sites to see what's going on in the construction site. To do it from the work zone is not always a safe thing either. There's not always a safe place to pull over."