Lettuce field hit by crashing helicopter, but no injuries
July 21, 2011, 04:44 pm
A helicopter crash in a field of romaine lettuce near Watsonville, in Santa Cruz County, California, left no one injured.
The owner of the helicopter, Frank Gomes, had just finished spraying the field when he gave his apprentice the chopper for a practice run. The apprentice pilot was alone in the Bell 47G5 when the helicopter clipped a nearby power line and crashed into the lettuce field.
"The practice didn't go all that well today," Gomes told the Santa Cruz Sentinel, in his only public statement.
Firefighters stopped and cleaned up a small fuel leak from the crash. The helicopter itself won't be removed from the field until the lettuce is harvested to avoid damaging the crops any further.
This is the second time in the past year Gomes was involved in a helicopter crash. In September of 2010, he crashed a chopper into Highway 101 shortly after liftoff from the Salinas Municipal Airport.
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