There is a Geocaching series commemorating this event and it includes photos and information (
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Following is an excerpt from an article on EMS Network (
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"The pilot, nurse and paramedic of an air ambulance that crashed Sunday night in a foggy, hilly area near the Cajon Pass summit were an experienced crew, a company official said today.
The three died when the Mercy Air Services Inc. helicopter went down at about 6 p.m. on its way back to Victorville after dropping a patient off at Loma Linda University Medical Center.
The pilot had been with Mercy Air for one year, but was retired from the military and had 18 years experience and 3,000 hours under his belt, said Craig Yale, vice president of corporate development for Air Methods Corp., the parent company for Mercy Air. The pilot had 1,000 hours of flying time in the High Desert, Yale said.
The nurse on board had been with the company for six years, while the paramedic had worked for Mercy for two years, Yale said.
Mercy Air has grounded its Inland helicopters as fellow pilots and crewmembers grieve the loss of their colleagues.
"We are just trying to gather as a big family," Yale said at a news conference at Rialto Municipal Airport. "We are all feeling the loss of our friends and coworkers."
Roy Cox, Mercy Air's Rialto-based program director, said he knew all three personally.
"It is a tremendous loss," he said.
The weather in the Cajon Pass was foggy Sunday night as the helicopter crew departed Loma Linda University Medical Center at 5:52 p.m., when Mercy Air received its last verbal communication from the pilot.
Three minutes later, at 5:55 p.m., Mercy Air lost view of the helicopter on the company's Global Position Satellite tracking system, Yale said.
The tracking system can briefly lose helicopters flying over hilly terrain, but if it is not tracked for five minutes, the company starts emergency measures, Yale said.
Four minutes after losing the helicopter on the tracking system, and just around 6 p.m., Mercy Air received a report about a downed aircraft from the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department, Yale said.
The helicopter crashed about a mile east of I-15, north of Highway 138 and south of the Oak Hills area.
The helicopter burst into flames and started a brush fire about three-quarters of an acre in size, said Tracey Martinez, a San Bernardino County Fire Department spokeswoman.
The fire department quickly surrounded the fire to keep it from spreading but let it burn itself out, she said.
Yale said he did not know the specifics of what might have caused Sunday's night's crash, the first for Mercy Air since 2002.
"It is dangerous for me to speculate," he said. "We don't deliberately try to be in a situation where we don't have visibility."
Cox said pilots typically try and find the most direct route from Loma Linda to Victorville on return flights and will try to fly below bad weather. The eastern portion of the pass, where the crash took place, has the lowest terrain, he said.
The Cajon Pass can often be difficult for pilots to navigate, and in extreme weather, Mercy Air often must fly patients to Palm Springs instead, Cox said.
Mercy Air has operated the single-rotor, twin-engine Bell 412 since May 2004. It was built in 1987 and since underwent a major overhaul, Yale said."