NTSB hunting for clues in deadly crash

A helicopter crash on Sunday afternoon in the Terrebonne Parish marshes of Bayou Penchant killed eight of the nine people onboard.

The sole survivor was taken to the Leonard J. Chabert Medical Center in Houma and later transported to Oschner Hospital in New Orleans where he remains in critical condition.

The cause of the crash is under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board and Lafayette-based Petroleum Heli-copters Inc, which operated the Sikorsky S-76C helicopter.

The flight took off from PHI’s Amelia base with two pilots and seven passengers bound for Shell’s South Timbalier 300 Block offshore platform.

Those killed have been identified as PHI pilots Thomas E. Ballenger of Eufaula, Ala., and Vyarl W. Martin of Hurst, Texas; Dynamic Industries employees Allen Boudreaux of Ama, Randy Tarpley of Jonesville, and Andrew Moricio and Ezequiel Cantu of Morgan City; and MMR Offshore Services employees Charles W. Nelson of Pensacola, Fla., and Jorey A. Rivere, of Bridge City.

The surviving passenger is Steven Yelton, a Dynamic Indus-tries worker from Floresville, Texas.

“Our deepest sympathies go out to all of the families of those who were on board the aircraft,” Richard Rovinelli, CAO and director of human resources at PHI, said in a statement.

PHI provides helicopter transportation and related services to customers in the oil and gas and air medical industries.

According to NTSB spokesman Ted Lopatkiewicz, the flight crashed about seven minutes after takeoff, around 2:10 p.m. He said there were scattered clouds and visibility was 10 miles at the time of the crash.

An NTSB investigator has been dispatched to PHI headquarters to review aircraft maintenance and flight records. Two more investigators arrived at the crash site yesterday in an attempt to retrieve the aircraft’s “black box,” a combination cockpit voice and flight data recorder.

“If there was any communication between the crew and (PHI) headquarters, that would have been recorded and he will listen to those as well,” Lopatkiewicz said.

According to published reports, a distress signal from the helicopter was picked up by the U.S. Air Force Rescue Coordination Center in Virginia around 3 p.m., which alerted the Coast Guard station in New Orleans.

“We were told from the company that they heard no distress signals from the crew,” Lopatkiewicz said. “That might be referring to an automatic device that sends distress signals after the crash, but I don’t know as of yet.”

There are other recording devices in the helicopter that are for maintenance purposes and are not manufactured to survive a crash, he explained. But if they survive and are recovered, investigators hope to get information from those as well.

The Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office Water Patrol and U.S. Coast Guard recovered all the bodies just after 10 p.m. on Sunday. The bodies were brought ashore at the Bayou Black Marina.

“It looked like a movie set with all the big floodlights they had out there,” said one local who refused to be identified.

Lopatkiewicz noted that generally, a final crash report takes nine to 12 months to complete.

Terrebonne Parish sheriff’s deputy Dudley Authement Jr. (left) and Lt. Chris Guise prepare to launch an airboat from Bayou Black Marina in Gibson. The pair went out to the crash site Monday in Bayou Penchant searching for clues into why a PHI helicopter went down. * Photo by KEYON J. JEFF