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a prayer for Steve. Kleenex was passed around.
Afterward, a lot of us went over to the maintenance hangar
206 Jennifer Culkin
to take a look at the fuselage, which had been brought in from
the crash site. There was a large hole in the skylight above the
pilot s seat, and the floor under the pilot had caved in where it
had landed on a big stump. The crew cabin didn t look as bad as
I d imagined it would, even on my side, the left side I might
have survived. It had been vertically compressed, however, and I
thought of those forces transmitting through my spinal column
and vital organs. My headrest was buckled, and my window was
shattered. One of the pilots present pointed out that the main-
rotor transmission wasn t sitting in our seats, so we wouldn t
have been crushed to death. But Ben told me later that three
of the four transmission supports had snapped, so there hadn t
been much keeping it from sitting in our seats.
On Tuesday, two days after the crash, I worked a twenty-
four-hour shift in Arlington with Ben. As soon as we arrived, at
9:00 a.m., we flew down to Seattle to attend another crash de-
briefing, less formal, more intimate. Thirty or forty people were
there, and there was coffee and more Kleenex. Some were talk-
ing about their families how their wives and husbands, their
sons and daughters wanted to know they were safe at work, and
how they couldn t provide that assurance.
I had discussed it myself with Howie, and with Kieran and
Gabe. I showed them pictures of the damaged fuselage, all of us
uncharacteristically quiet as we took it in. I shared every scrap
of information with them. But one of the things I love about the
men in my life is that when it comes to the Big Issues, they don t
demand promises I m unwilling to make or can t keep. They ac-
cepted the risk with me; they didn t ask me to quit. They never
even hinted at it. And all I could tell them in return was that I
didn t feel, in my bones, that I would die in a helicopter. As a
rationale (or a rationalization) for a hazardous occupation, it s
pitifully thin. But when I said that, Howie nodded. Sometimes
you get bit by the beast, he said. Steve got bit, that s all.
A Final Arc of Sky 207
It was an unusually vivid metaphor for Howie, weighted
with metaphysical overtones, also unusual. And I think he meant
that you can t see it coming, but also that the bite is random. You
can t let the fear of it keep you from the business of your life.
Halfway through the meeting in Seattle, we were paged
out. For what, I don t remember, except that winter weather
again prevented us from flying all the way to our destination.
We landed at the closest airport and waited for the referring
hospital to ground our patient to us. My partner that day was
from a distant base with a separate staff I had seen her from
time to time, but as a partner she was an unknown quantity.
That might have been stressful, but I was tired enough not to
care, tired enough to trust that we d do fine together.
We talked about the potential causes of the crash. The
theory seemed to be that a small amount of water or snow had
been sucked in via the air intakes, snuffing first one and then the
other engine. I heard that Steve had checked for snow in front
of the intakes but that a small amount might have been hidden
from view. And a helicopter can potentially land safely without
engine power, by autorotation. During autorotation, the main
rotor turns solely by the action of air moving up through the ro-
tor, instead of by engine power driving the rotor. Since the tail
rotor is driven by the main rotor transmission, it also can func-
tion without power. The pilot would retain some control over
descent and heading. But since power loss occurred just after
takeoff, at a low speed and altitude, autorotation in this case did
not prevent a crash landing. I didn t understand every detail of
the physics involved. But I felt in my gut the sluggishness of the
aircraft just after takeoff, and it made intuitive sense.
Later that afternoon, we flew into the mountains for a scene
response, landing behind a highway maintenance facility. We
waited half an hour on the ground before the flight was canceled
by the referring medics; we never even saw the patient. All three
208 Jennifer Culkin
of us were relieved. On the way back to base, the mountains at
our backs, skimming over the sodden fields of winter, we tried
to sort out what we thought and felt.
Every member of the crew had the right to say, I don t
feel safe, and to refuse to fly or to abort the flight midmission.
That said, there was a lot of weather where we operated and it
varied in little microclimates all across the region. Weather was
reported from fixed sites; it was not always possible to predict
what we d encounter at every moment during a hundred-mile
flight. It was a fact of life, to be scud-running up in the heli-
copter, skirting areas of poor visibility in the effort to reach a
patient.
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