Thunderstorm Encounters

What: Guatemalan air force helicopter Bell UH1H
Where: Quebrada Seca, Petén Guatemala
When: Feb 28 2012 10 am
Who: 10 fatalities
Why: After a civilian chopper crashed, the Guatemalan air force helicopter on a regular Tuesday mission went to assist in the rescue but crashed en route. The seven officers and three air force specialists diverted from their mission “to supply some detachments are located in the Laguna del Tigre,” and died in the crash in bad weather in the mountainous area. It appears that when the military chopper reached the scene of the first crash, the rescue had already been handled, so they elected to continue on their mission, and it was on the continuation of the journey to Peten that the accident occurred.

According to eyewitnesses, the helicopter lost power near the village of Quebrada Seca, in the vicinity of the town of San Luis.

Three were crew—two lieutenants and a specialist—and the seven passengers were a flight lieutenant, two second lieutenants of aviation, a second lieutenant of infantry, two specialists and an aére-military policeman. (José Everardo Portillo Salazar, Manuel Ovalle Garcia and Armando Barrientos Mynor, the lieutenants Jose Alejandro Rodriguez and Flores Be Zechariah, Amilcar specialist Humberto Leon and Manuel Escobar Axpuac, Emerson Reyes and Paolo Rivera Martinez Galindo Elbu Stuart, One person was unidentified.)

Pilot Lieutenant Everaldo Portillo had more than 700 flight hours.

The first chopper apparently hit power lines which apparently helped break the fall. It crashed in the El Guarumo in Semox village on Guatemala’s Caribbean coast ( Livingston, Izabal). Three injured survivors of the original crash were taken to del Hospital Roosevelt in Morales, Izabal. The survivors of the first crash were listed as Carlos Larios Aguilar, 48, the pilot of the ship John Paul Moran, 52, and mechanic Jose Gomez, 28. The first chopper was #TG-SAN, also out of Petén.