Transportation

In 2010, a Coast Guard helicopter crash in Washington state claimed the lives of three airmen from Sitka.

Today, for the first time, we’ll hear from the sole survivor of the incident, Lieutenant Lance Leone.

The MH-60 Jayhawk, known by its tail number, 6017, had been upgraded in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. An aircrew of four left Air Station Sitka to pick up the new chopper in Astoria, Oregon and fly it back to Alaska.

On July 7, 2010, during the first leg of that return flight, the helicopter struck wires near La Push, Washington, and crashed into the sea.

Lieutenant Sean Krueger, who was the pilot in command, along with Petty Officer First Class Adam Hoke and Petty Officer Second Class Brett Banks – were killed.

Leone, the co-pilot, faced criminal charges in the aftermath of the crash. Those charges were dismissed, but an official reprimand was placed on his record, and he was transferred to a desk job in San Antonio, Texas.

He spoke to KCAW’s Ed Ronco last week. It is the first time he’s talked on the record to a news organization, and we’re going to bring you the interview in three parts. Today, we begin just before the crash, which happened shortly after Leone transferred to Air Station Sitka.

LEONE: I literally had just gotten there. I was still living in a bed and breakfast in the community because my household goods had not arrived yet. So, all of our couches and stuff had not arrived yet from Elizabeth City, because it was taking a barge around the whole world. I don’t know where it went exactly.

RONCO: It felt like the whole world.

LEONE: It felt like that.

RONCO: If we can begin with when you first get to Astoria: Was it the morning of? Or the night before?

LEONE: We were assigned to fly down to Astoria in the Juliet model. 6017 was flying from Elizabeth City, which was an aircraft I’d flown before quite a bit. It was flying across the country and we were flying down from Sitka. We were going to rendezvous in Astoria, exchange paperwork on the two different aircraft, and then the pilots were going to shake hands, swap aircraft, and we were going to fly back to Sitka, and the other aircraft was going to fly back to Elizabeth City. It’s an often done thing in the Coast Guard. Our large depot maintenance is all done in Elizabeth City, so we have to switch our aircraft out.

RONCO: What does it feel like to pick up a new chopper? Is it like driving a car off a lot, or…

LEONE: So, it’s interesting — 6017, I had actually flown it the whole time I was in Elizabeth City. I’d done most of the test flights on it when it came out of the depot maintenance. I’d flown it. When we say it’s brand new, it was refurbished. We’d bought these 60s in 1991 through 1993 – that timeframe – and they’re the same aircraft. They look absolutely gorgeous always, because we have some of the best maintainers in the world. They’re not brand new, but they are totally, beautifully refurbished. The 6017 had sat in Elizabeth City and I’d flown it on cases in Elizabeth City. It was great to go from the J model to the T model. It was like a new aircraft even though they’ve just been polished and re-done from the inside, like they do with most aircraft that you fly on in the commercial world. They just replace all the parts.

Leone says he was selected for the mission two days beforehand. He and Lt. Sean Krueger, the chopper’s pilot, had met at the Academy. And although Leone had known Krueger for most of adult life, this would be one of their first times flying together. As co-pilot, Leone’s responsibility was inside the cockpit – to monitor equipment and navigate the helicopter along a safe course.

LEONE: The morning of the mishap, we all woke up, we had breakfast at a hotel in Astoria. Everyone was very happy to have had the opportunity to go to Astoria. It was one of the warmest couple days on record there. Leaving Sitka, heading down to Astoria where it was beautiful, taking the opportunity to do lots of shopping at Costco. We were all very motivated to get back home.

LEONE: We’d spent three days talking about, on the way down, what we were going to do on the way back up. How the weather, what the winds were going to be affecting. We did a lot of talking around the dinner table and the breakfast table that morning about some of the different things we were going to have to experience. The morning was fairly hurried, because we knew we had a long way to go. 900 miles with a possible 20-knot headwind depending what altitude we were at was going to make it a very long day, so we knew we had to get on the road. We got all the checklists completed, a lot of business on the ground. We took off, climbed to 800 feet, and upon reaching 800 feet, we realized we’d had a headwind that was predicted. We came right back down again to a lower altitude. It was more of an off-shore or on-shore breeze, because there are cliffs all along that shoreway there. It was an absolutely gorgeous day.

The Jayhawk had been upgraded with a new avionics system – those are the electronics that control the helicopter. It included a new autopilot system. Leone refers to it as a “coupler.”

LEONE: When you cross through into Canadian airspace, you have to tell them exactly what time and what location you’ll be crossing into that airspace. So I set that track, I told them how far away it was, and I engaged our auto pilot, which couples up the flight controls with the path I’d set. The path was an offshore path that hit a point on the Canadian airspace, which we would then tell them we were going to fly through there.

RONCO: So Canadian authorities know exactly where you’re going to be, and that that’s you.

LEONE: Correct. We were making jokes about it. I don’t think Canadians ever shot down an American plane headed north. It’s way more important going into American airspace, but you give them the same courtesy that they give us.

Krueger was an experienced pilot whose career included a three-year exchange program with the British Royal Navy. But Leone was more experienced on the revamped helicopter’s systems, especially the autopilot.

LEONE: I was very excited to show him how you can engage it. It will fly itself. As long as you keep it away from obstacles and have the right altitude it will fly you safely to wherever you tell it to fly you.

By this time, Coast Guard 6017 was nearing La Push, Washington. The small town on the Olympic Peninsula is home to the Quileute Tribe, as well as a small Coast Guard boat station.

LEONE: We both saw something up ahead. It was a Coast Guard cutter leaving port – actually, a CG small boat, a 47-footer, leaving (Station) Quillayute (River).

The helicopter was flying at 220 feet when Krueger began flying it toward the boat. Leone says it’s a maneuver pilots often perform at sea when checking on fishing boats or spotting a Coast Guard vessel. The Coast Guard’s report on the accident acknowledges that performing the maneuver is not isolated to this incident, but says vessels should not be – quote – “zoomed” except in an emergency or during rescue operations. Leone describes the next 42 seconds, when Helicopter 6017 slowed to 115 knots, descended to 114 feet, and passed over the boat.

LEONE: At this time, he (Krueger) said “coupler disengaged” and he started a righthand turn down in a decreasing altitude along the coastline. At this point in the flight recorder it gets very interesting. I say “Well, that’s Quillayute.” And I say it wrong. I can’t read it. It’s a very difficult word. It’s like many Tlingit terms that are hard for us to read in our language. But I said it, and on the third time of saying it, moments later, we hit something we never saw. And … I was … at that moment, everything changed.

That’s Coast Guard Lt. Lance Leone, recorded last week (Nov 12) at the studios of Texas Public Radio in San Antonio. His attorney, John Smith, listened in on the conversation from his office near Washington, D.C., but did not prevent his client from answering any of our questions.

Tomorrow, Leone describes the accident, and how it changed his life and his career forever.

“We were flying, everything was fine, and then it blew apart. When I was underwater I didn’t know anything. It felt like the world was shaking apart.”

Amalga Harbor Road will be closed tomorrow (Thursday) and Friday while crews from the Alaska Department of Transportation install two prefabricated bridges over sections of Peterson Creek.

DOT Spokesman Jeremy Woodrow says the work is ahead of schedule, so the closure has been moved up from the previously announced date of next Monday.

“Work went smoother than anticipated,” Woodrow said. “Sometimes that happens, and it’s always good thing. The less inconvenience we can cause to travelers the better.”

Woodrow says the current bridge sections of Amalga Harbor Road are safe for regular traffic, but no longer meet the load requirements of DOT’s winter maintenance heavy vehicle fleet.

The plan is to build permanent spans next year. In the meantime DOT will install two 40-foot by 18-foot modular steel bridges built by Acrow Corporation of New Jersey.

Instead of hiring a contractor, Woodrow says the work will be done by DOT employees. He says the department wants to be prepared in case it needs to use Acrow bridges in the future, for example during an emergency.

“In case we ever did have, say, major flooding or some sort of natural cause incident where a bridge had to be replaced, this is an exercise for the department to learn how to install these bridges in a certain time frame,” said Woodrow.

Woodrow says the two prefab bridges cost a combined $290,000 dollars. Once they’re replaced by permanent spans, the modular units can be put into storage and reused.

The Amalga Harbor Road closure will be in effect from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday. Woodrow says drivers could experience delays through next Tuesday as work continues in the area.

The Holland America Oosterdam pulled out of Juneau at 6 p.m. Wednesday, ending the cruise ship season for the year.

About 925,000 passengers visited Alaska’s capital city this summer, according to Juneau Convention and Visitors Bureau President Lorene Palmer.

“We had close to 37 different vessels from 15 different cruise lines,” Palmer says.

The number of cruise passengers has steadily increased after the 2009 decline. The peak came in 2008, when more than one million tourists visited Juneau by cruise ship.

More small ships came to Juneau this season, a market Palmer hopes will expand.

“Those folks do tend to come in a day before or after their cruise experience, because many of them start and end in Juneau. So we were happy to see that bit of business grow as well,” she says. “It’s good for the hotels and we just hope we can continue to encourage those people to add more days to their pre- or their post-cruise experience.”

The 2013 cruise ship season begins about May l. Two more ships are expected — a Princess ship and another from Norwegian Cruise Lines.

Need a bridge?

It’s not the usual thing to see in the classifieds, but the state of Alaska wants to unload the 47-year-old Brotherhood Bridge, which spans Juneau’s Mendenhall River.

Federal law requires the state Department of Transportation preserve historic bridges if possible, says Jane Gendron, Environmental Manager for the Southeast Region.

“If you can’t re-engineer or keep that bridge in place, you reach out and find other interested parties who would be able to remove the bridge and reassemble to preserve its historic nature in another location,” Gendron says. “That is a requirement as part of our federal funding for a bridge replacement project.”

Brotherhood Bridge was designed by Alaska Native leader Roy Peratrovich, Jr. for the 50th anniversary of the Alaska Native Brotherhood. The bridge was dedicated on Alaska Day in 1965.

The new bridge will be built next year to accommodate four lanes of traffic, a multi-use path on one side and sidewalk on the other.

Beyond that, there are few details, says DOT Chief Bridge Engineer Rich Pratt. He says bridge designers are waiting for highway engineers to finalize roadway specifications.

“Start with the road. You know, how wide do the road guys want the road? And what does the alignment look like? And then we’ll make the bridge match the road,” Pratt says. “It’s very rare for the bridge to control anything.”

The 319 foot-long, 30-foot-wide reinforced concrete and steel Brotherhood Bridge is unremarkable, except for special bronze medallions representing the crest of the Alaska Native Brotherhood. Pratt says they will be removed and preserved.

Like most old bridges, Brotherhood Bridge has been painted with lead-based paint. DOT is responsible for removing all the paint before it’s sold, if it ever is.

“It is not uncommon that no one wants these old bridges and then what happens is we document what’s out there, all of that is filed away through the historic people (Office of History & Archaeology), and then it’s sent out to be recycled,” Pratt says.

Brotherhood Bridge is eligible for the National Register of Historic Places.

If someone decides to preserve it, they will have to remove it.

DOT has set no price for the bridge.

Basin Road Bridge will be closed from Oct. 2 until Dec. 1 for the second phase of bridge reconstruction.

Silver Bow Construction Project Manager Larry Gamez says a temporary pedestrian bridge will be open from 5 p.m. to 7 a.m. daily. Access to Perseverance Trail will be via the Flume Trail.

During the next two months, “Silver Bow Construction will be replacing the structural timbers on the underside of the trestle bridge; also replacing the bridge decking, railings, on top of the bridge,” Gamez says.

The project started in October 2011. Gamez says it is 75 percent complete. About mid-April, workers took a break to accommodate the tourist season. Basin Road is access to Last Chance Basin, the mining museum, and popular hiking trails.

The original Basin Road Bridge was built in 1936 when the AJ Mine was in operation. It has been rebuilt a number of times since.

This reconstruction is estimated to cost just over one and a quarter million dollars and is paid for by federal funds.

Three weeks before leaving for Germany to take pre-trial depositions in the fast ferry lawsuit, state lawyers are extremely anxious about whether potential witnesses will voluntarily answer questions.

The State of Alaska and the Alaska Marine Highway System are suing the company that made the allegedly defective engines for the Fairweather and Chenega.

Ten potential witnesses, employees of the firm MTU Friedrichshafen, are located in Germany. State attorneys would prefer that the company compel them to appear. Senior Assistant Attorney General Dana Burke predicted a scenario in which the witnesses “don’t show up at deposition and then don’t show up at trial.”

Lawyers for MTU Friedrichshafen and MTU Detroit Diesel — now renamed as Tognum America — say German law forbids them from ordering their employees to participate in oral depositions. General Counsel Christopher Koch said during a teleconferenced status hearing in Juneau Superior Court on Monday that the employees have agreed to appear. But they can only participate voluntarily and they can simply walk out at any time. In addition, potential witnesses cannot be videotaped and cannot take an oath.

That would render their comments less as testimony, and more as a product of a question and answer session. Alaska attorneys are also concerned that MTU/Tognum America will try to use the commentary from those depositions as expert witness testimony during trial.

Tognum America attorneys say there is a formal process to order potential witnesses to appear and answer questions at discovery depositions. But it’s up to the attorneys representing Alaska to learn about German law and follow that procedure. Koch said – in directing his comments to State attorneys — that “we’re not obliged to do your work.”

In addition to the initial ten employees, Burke submitted a request last month to depose three others. But Tognum America officials says those three will likely be unavailable as they have left the company or will be traveling in the last half of October when the depositions are scheduled.

A three-week trial is scheduled to start early next April.

The Connecticut company that built the ferries, Derecktor Shipyard, filed for bankruptcy protection in January and is not currently part of the lawsuit.