A REACH medical helicopter crashes off Catalina, killing the pilot and a nurse

A medical helicopter that left Santa Catalina Island on Wednesday night is on the seabed off Avalon, with the pilot and a nurse dead and the patient still missing. Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said on Thursday it is unlikely the patient survived. Investigators have found the wreckage about 200 feet down. Early reports put the depth near 240 feet. Two other people on board were pulled out and were stable.

The aircraft was a Eurocopter EC135 P2, configured as an air ambulance and owned by REACH Air Medical Services of Sacramento, the National Transportation Safety Board and the Coast Guard said. Flight-tracking data show it left Catalina's Pebbly Beach heliport and reached about 175 feet above the sea roughly eight seconds into the flight, then descended fast. Authorities took the first calls shortly before 8 p.m. County fire, the sheriff and the Coast Guard answered. Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn said she had been told the crash came shortly after takeoff.

Sources familiar with the investigation told the Los Angeles Times the missing woman is a 45-year-old Avalon resident who was being flown to the mainland after a severe allergy attack. Luna did not name her at the press conference. He did say the depth of the wreckage and the time in the water made survival unlikely. The two survivors were taken to hospitals. Their conditions were not set out in detail on Thursday beyond the word stable.

Catalina sits about 22 miles off the Los Angeles County mainland. Pebbly Beach is the island's working heliport, used for the runs that carry patients who cannot wait for a boat. An eight-second climb to 175 feet is a normal early profile for a light twin helicopter. The tracking plot's next mark, a rapid descent, is the fact the NTSB will have to explain. Wreckage at 200 feet is recoverable, but it is not a shoreline job. Divers and a salvage vessel are the next tools, and the recorder, if the EC135 was carrying one in a form that survived salt water, is in that debris field.

REACH has a second fatal case still open. A company helicopter crashed in the Sacramento area last October. The NTSB's final report on that accident is not out. Two fatal medical flights in twelve months does not, by itself, establish a common cause. It does mean the same operator is now in two open files, and that the Catalina aircraft type, ownership and departure point are already on the record while the patient is not.

The island's problem is narrower than the company's. Avalon has no full trauma hospital. Serious cases go by helicopter or by boat to the mainland. If the heliport is closed while the crash site is worked, the boat becomes the only path, and the boat is slower for an allergy attack or a cardiac case. Hahn's office and the sheriff have not said how long flight operations from Pebbly Beach will be limited. That gap is the local consequence, separate from the NTSB's cause work.

What is fixed as of Thursday afternoon is the count. Two dead, two survivors, one missing. A named operator, a named type, a named heliport, a climb of about 175 feet in about eight seconds, and a wreck about 200 feet down. The patient's name has not been released by the sheriff. The cause has not been stated by the NTSB. Both of those absences are the next documents in the file.